(diaryland) November 27, 2009 - 11:07 p.m.

I've got a bit of a herculean effort to get to the end right now, but I do only have a bit over 10,000 words to go, and most importantly I know where I'm headed, so I should be OK. So, here's the next installment.

Chapter the Eighteenth

I had a dream that I checked my e-mail.

It was a pretty realistic dream. I dreamt that when I got to the computer, there was no longer the emergency picture of a puppy in a bowl of cherries on the desktop, nor was there the picture of Vaughn lying in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by gawkers. Instead, there was a picture of a burnt-out house filling the screen. Everything was black, and there were holes in the walls where there were never meant to be. The tin roof was a puddle on the ground. An iron bed frame was struggling to be recognisable under my �Recycle Bin� icon. Everything that had been nestled in the house was still there, you could tell, but it had been reduced to ash. Ash, noxious gas that stuck to the remains in lacquered layers according to their molecular make-up, and black blobs that sucked in the light and wouldn�t let it go. The only thing that wasn�t completely obliterated was a scorched patch of wall where you could just see a little rectangle of the ghost of wallpaper; a pink design. That was where the family photo had been hanging.

I hated the image. I changed it to a picture of a mountain, just by thinking about it. The mountain was eminently serious, completely grey, and had a slice off the top at a sharp angle. A thin, puffy cloud was hugging the peak. I knew that the mountain peak was called M�tikas. I just knew that. It looked like a mystical mountain in the shape of a nose. The sky around it was blue, cloudless and uncomprehending.

I liked this picture a lot more.

Then, I jumped on the net. I opened my e-mail. There, at the top of the inbox, I had an e-mail from Vaughn. I wondered what shape he was in. Whether he was in any shape at all. I wondered whether he was a human anymore. Maybe he was just breath. I wondered whether he was mad at me, or felt sorry for what kind of a life I had to put up with, or whether he wanted me to throw the remaining toy soldiers I found into the fountain because they represented his heart, or whether he missed the pizza-laden morning he�d attempted to enjoy in my backyard. If I cleaned up that backyard, it would actually be a pretty cool backyard, I thought.

I clicked on his message, (no subject). It said,

i like it here i will never come back

I shut the browser window straight away. I could feel the bottom of my face go red. I opened my e-mail window up again on second thoughts, deleted the message, then shut the window again. I shut it by clicking the red X box in the top right a thousand times.

I looked at the screen, unclouded by browser windows bearing messages I didn�t want to read. The desktop image was still a mountain, but the sky was brighter. Suddenly, the sun flashed into the desktop view, no longer eclipsed by my firefox icon. It was white, and as it became more visible, and took up more of the screen, it turned into the sort of white that was a freezing blue. I had to unavoidably squint, and then the computer just turned off. The screen went black.

Of course, this was all a dream. But it jerked me awake.

Shit, that dream had felt real.

I had awoken from the groggy kind of sleep where you know you weren�t supposed to wake up yet. Normally, when you�re having a dream, you feel pretty much OK when you wake up, because you were in a state similar to being actually awake anyway. It�s just all topsy-turvy there, in your head. But, not this time. I had green salt in my eyes, and they wouldn�t open all the way.

I was lying half on top of my sleeping bag with the TV off. It was dark again.

I could hear a buzzing sound coming from the front yard, bouncing down the hall, into the rumpus room. I shook my head. Shit, man, I thought. I can�t go on like this. What the fuck is that?

I didn�t know which thing to do first. Check my e-mail, or go and investigate the buzzing sound. I didn�t want to do either.

I stood in the hallway. Eh, fuck it, I�ll see if Vaughn actually did send me a negative e-mail, I thought. Checking e-mail seemed less life-threatening than attempting to check out the goings-on in my front yard. Maybe more disappointing, but at least I would live. How valuable living on in this half-arsed, half real life I was having was debateable, though. I really had to go back to work. Have a chiko roll at Fontana�s truck stop again, and tear those crappy photos of me off the wall of dubious fame, and have small problems like that.

I wished the fountain would bloody give me my hat back.

I sat down, took a deep breath, and woke my computer up. It spluttered back to life, its fan churning a bit. It didn�t like computing things in the warm air that had been pervading the whole of November since that first misty day of the official start of my Annual Leave.

Thankfully, the desktop image was still the puppy lounging around in perfectly good cherries which would now get thrown out due to them all potentially touching a puppy�s arse which is a big waste picture. It distanced me from the dream a little bit. It made me think, phew, OK. I�m in reality now, or whatever was closest to it. Vaughn�s probably going to come back one day. Maybe. That is, if he manages to not dissolve into a million billion bits of dust and toys again, which seemed to be a little bit hard for him not to do. Maybe Vaughn�s real life e-mail would be like, �Hi! Thanks for attempting to shovel me into the fountain again while your ankles got burnt! ROFL!� and this time he might have even been able to get it together to use capital letters and everything. And he would know how I felt in my head, and there would be a plan about how to get out and how to get back to normal, if ever you can. And this time, there would be no hacking coughs.

But, there was no such e-mail. All I had gotten was an e-mail from the Acephalus Support Group with something about a venue change in the title, however it was spelt �vernuRe�.

I didn�t open it. I deleted it.

OK, I thought. Phase One, Check E-mail, was disappointing. Maybe Vaughn was dead, anyway. Or just needed a little time to get his bearings after dissolving into another dimension again. I knew I would. Yeah, I preferred that interpretation.

Phase Two, Check Yard for Supernatural Activity, officially began. Who knows, Vaughn might be out there anyway, I thought. Slim chance, very slim chance, but possible. Vaguely possible. Yeah, really vaguely possible.

My feet squeaked slightly on the floor as I crept down the hall. I was getting really good at creeping down the hall.

The buzzing from the front yard was more of a deafening roar, really, I realised as I crept closer to the front door. It sounded like the roar of infernal machinery; the kind of roar you needed earmuffs firmly on ears in order to handle, and to take the brutal edge off the sound.

I looked out. I couldn�t see anything. It was dark grey out there.

I put my ear up to the door. The roar seemed to be contained to a very small area, but this area was moving back and forth. Perhaps it was an evil mechanical dog that had gotten loose from the fountain and was now terrorising my garden.

I couldn�t leave it. I opened the front door on the chain, and took a peek out.

What I saw wasn�t anything like what I expected.

It was the statue, mowing the lawn.

The smell of grass being cut was like the smell of family. I unchained the door and stood on the porch and watched.

The statue sure was doing a good job. It didn�t mow the lawn too close to the ground, which I wasn�t a fan of, because it kills the grass when you do that in hot weather. It wasn�t wearing any form of ear protection.

I�d never seen that lawn mower before, but it wouldn�t have surprised me if someone told me that I owned it. I had no clue what one could unearth in my vast garage if they really tried. I knew for sure there was a golf buggy in there. There was probably a guy totally in plaid whose sole job was to drive it, too, but if this was so I�d most likely killed him out of neglect.

It finished mowing the whole entire front yard, turned the mower off, and looked at me.

[Its mouth opened slightly]

I�m disappointed.

Why are you mowing my lawn?

I wanted to be helpful.

You could have been more helpful this afternoon.

[It took one step towards me, paused, and then took a step back again]

I couldn�t help.

[I scratched my head]

I can�t understand you.

[It put its hand on its chest]

The less you think about me, the less I am alive. I can�t control things. Nor can you. It�s like a well, and when you put things in the well, they pile up. And when someone else takes them out, they get to keep them.

I guess you�re right.

[I had no real idea what that meant, to be honest]

[I felt sad.]

The statue wheeled the lawn mower over to the driveway and disappeared out of view. About thirty seconds later, I heard the garage door go.

Everything I had felt about the statue before Vaughn reappeared had been different. It had been a gorgeous riddle. Now, it was just some normal guy. Some guy who seemed to be slightly put out by me having a friend over, and who didn�t help me when my hostessing skills ended in tragedy, and who mowed my lawn without asking. Some guy who avoided answering my questions properly with sayings about wells that sounded like it was making them up on the spot.

It came back into view and walked across the lawn with its athletic posture that it had, and then assumed its position in the fountain. The strain of looking like you were lifting that top tier forever must have been agony to keep up.

I said out loud, �Wait.�

It shook its head slowly, and then went blank.

I stood there for a long time, and I got the shivers. So I went inside, and looked out into my garden. I could barely see anything. Every night, the moon was getting thinner.

I tried to think very deeply about the statue. I really did. I wanted to help it. I wanted it to come loose from the fountain again so at least I wouldn�t be by myself. I watched its deep grey form from out of the sidelight next to my front door. But my mind wasn�t totally thinking about it, no matter how hard it tried.

So, I went and checked my e-mail again.

Nothing. Zip.

Still early days yet, I thought.

I sighed. I was restless.

I couldn�t leave things alone. I went back outside. I was going to give that statue a piece of my mind. I was going to say, you can�t wuss out now. This isn�t about my thoughts, and how much brain power I need to devote to keeping it alive.

But I didn�t end up doing that, because something had presumably been delivered out of the fountain. The statue looked dead to the world, anyway.

I was pretty sure that this object was a sign.

Well, fairly sure.

It was sitting there, facing me, looking cheerful, exactly halfway between the fountain and my porch.

It was my Biff�s Fleet cap, good as new.