(diaryland) November 30, 2009 - 2:59 p.m.

Two chapters left, baby! (if everything goes according to plan)

Chapter the Twenty-First

Finally, a tear rolled down my cheek too.

I went back outside. The statues all had a silver sheen on them and the mercury held together in a way that water didn�t. I had a feeling about the meaning of life in the way I had a few times as a young kid. It was fucking amazing.

Then a mini bus rolled up, parked on the nature strip, and honked its horn like it knew me.

Turns out, it did.

In the cloudy evening, with the light bouncing off the ground and back into the clouds a zillion times, you could see things fairly clearly. And this mini bus had a sign on it; a blu-tacked on piece of A4. It said, in biro:

ACEPhALUS GROUP.
MeeT HERE 7;15PM
THEn WE GOiNG TO
NEW VERNuRe
GROUP TIME STiL 7:30-9:30

Great, I thought. I�m a little busy here.

The roller door opened in that youth group camp kind of sound and the first person to emerge was the clown-shaped Michael Bolton. I suddenly envisioned a ludicrous amount of clowns following him like they do at the circus. God forbid.

But, nope. Similar in some ways, but not quite as extreme. The next person was the small, grey lady who had been abducted by the alien in Marlon Brando gear, and then the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy, now wearing a t-shirt with a photo of some chick printed on it, looking kind of home-made. Then Dave, then the other people I never bothered to get to know, then Jesus, who must be sacrificing his nativity play rehearsals just to be here, then Doctor Andr�, out of the passenger seat, then even Dave, who must have been driving. The faith Doctor Andr� put in Dave was amazing. I wouldn�t have let him near the handlebars of a tricycle.

�Phew, that was a bit of a hairy ride,� said Doctor Andr� cheerfully. �We really should have put the L plates up, Dave.�

Dave shrugged.

I thought you weren�t supposed to drive minibuses when you were just learning. We had to get a special licence in truck school to be able to do that.

I was standing there on the porch with my arms crossed.

Doctor Andr� finally acknowledged me. �Oh, hi, Anastasia,� he said. �I sure hope Dave sent you the e-mail.�

�Yeah, I got it,� I said. �But I thought it was a junk e-mail. Sorry. I thought I�d made it pretty clear I�d quit your interesting brand of group therapy.�

�Oh. We didn�t interpret it that way,� said Doctor Andr�. �We interpreted it more like a cry for help a little bit. So here we are.�

I very mildly expected Vaughn to leap out of the van. The door was still open. But, he was indisposed in another dimension. I knew that.

�Well, I�m a bit busy communicating with a netherworld, so I�d appreciate it if you�d get off my lawn,� I said, not that they were on my lawn at this point. They were merely on the nature strip. My truck was still blocking the way in.

�Well, we have a slight problem, as we are increasingly concerned about you, especially since you just told us that you were communicating with a netherworld, plus the fact that the partner we assigned to you was last seen in your presence before disappearing off the face of the earth. Plus the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy shot the dolphin lamp so not only was it very dark in our clubhouse, but the bridge people evicted us for embedding bits of broken dolphin in the rather pliable walls,� said Doctor Andr�. �They don�t quite understand that some people need to express their frustrations and their anger in different ways during a therapy session.�

It was funny that even Doctor Andr� called the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy. Maybe that was his name. Doubtful, though.

One of the people in the support group who I�d never paid attention to before and never would again wandered over to the edge of the next door neighbour�s yard, and climbed over the fairly short fence behind a shrub and sidled onto my lawn. I wondered why I�d never thought of that before.

�Hey, there�s make-up all over these leaves,� he said.

So THAT�s how that disgusting made-up lady who complained about planning permits got into my yard. All became clear.

Of course, everyone followed. Those who passed too close to the made-up shrub came into the yard with streaks of red or blue across their cheeks, according to how tall they were.

�Guys, come on, please. Get off my lawn,� I said, more urgently. I really needed to go in and check my e-mail. At the time, I didn�t know that this would be nearly the very last e-mail I would receive from the place and the man, the titular King, beyond the fountain. I was barely ever in a people person kind of mood these days, but right now, I was even less like that. I just wanted to get another e-mail. I wanted someone to tell me about things that were in the depths of my mind because it made me feel better. Finally. Doctor Andr� and the bloody confusing workbooks were pretty much the opposite. At least for me. I wasn�t sure about Jesus � he seemed to be pretty cool with the whole thing. But, hey. That�s Jesus for you.

�Let�s all sit in a circle around this lovely calming fountain,� said Doctor Andr�, ignoring the fact that a toxic liquid metal was spurting out of it.

�Cool,� said Dave, sticking his finger out at the fountain, about to touch the quicksilver. I could see where that was going to lead. Straight to his mouth, for a little taste. God, he was incompetent. The mind boggled at how he had survived to this point. He looked about twenty-eight, no mean feat. I supposed that his long-suffering sister was the sole reason, really, since Doctor Andr� always seemed to be asking Dave to do things that put his life at risk, like getting him to try and find the Officeworks around the corner.

�If you want to die, taste the fountain,� I said.

Dave stopped in his tracks, so to speak.

I was impressed.

�Oh, OK, Anastasia has a point,� said Doctor Andr�. �It�s probably a bit dangerous, but what a lovely fountain � I�ve never seen one that uses mercury (how ingenious!) but I heard of one that�s in Spain and it�s behind glass, and what a lovely front yard. Freshly mowed, too. Just delightful. Well, Anastasia, I�m sure that you must have a lovely space inside that we could hold our meeting at which we specifically address your issues and problems. We can all take off our shoes, too. Come on, gang! Let�s go in!�

These guys just did not get the message. Doctor Andr� was the worst of the lot. Completely self-absorbed. It really put myself into perspective. At least I was conscious of how I was perceived in the world. Fuck.

I was no match for Jesus. He came striding up the steps like some kind of Jesus who was about to go into the temple of something and speak his mind to the wise dudes in there or whatever that whole story in the New Testament is all about. I never went to Sunday School, and my parents came from a land that officially didn�t have religion, so they were pretty clueless too.

Anyway, I�m getting off track.

So I had Jesus coming at me, and Dave loping about, and the clown-shaped Michael Bolton, and the others, whoever they were, bringing up the rear. The only one who seemed unsure about the whole thing, and that perhaps they were invading my privacy, was the small, grey lady, bless her heart.

She was the first person to notice part of the fountain moving.

My statue was on the loose again.

It came free from the fountain, dripping mercury. The quicksilver slid down its body in weird blobs like leeches that had fed on enough blood and were ready to return to the swamp. It looked like it was swimming through treacle, the least mobile it had ever been. I guess it was trying to save me from Jesus and Doctor Andr� and the rest of the useless gang as its strength was fading from my consciousness.

I�d never know for sure, but I�m 99.99 percent sure that it was going to save me.

But, yeah. It never got the chance.That stupid fuck, the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy, saw my statue approaching out of the corner of his eye, pulled out the biggest motherfucker of a gun I�d ever seen in my life out of his pants, calmly took aim, and fired about twenty rounds into the statue�s head. It was really quite astounding how remarkably unsafe such an act was.

�Now, �I ♥ MELISSA� guy, I gave you capsicum spray for situations like this, didn�t I?� said Doctor Andr�.

�Yeah, but it was in the pocket furthest away from my good arm,� said the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy.

�How about you swap the contents of your pockets for next time, then?� asked Doctor Andr� politely, while everyone else was cowering.

�OK,� said the �I ♥ MELISSA� guy, shrugging.

He clearly didn�t think anything was crazy out of control.

You could tell that the whole street was recoiling from the sound of bullets shattering Parian marble. There was silence; not even the background noises of dogs barking like you hear every time someone opens the front door on Neighbours. No wind or anything either. Just stunned silence. The only thing that happened was a curtain ruffled at the house on the other side of the road.

Ugh, that made-up lady.

Michael Bolton uncovered his ears. �Maybe we should go,� he said.

�Yeah,� said Jesus.

The small grey lady was already cowering by the mini bus, clearly busting to get in, if not also busting to go to the toilet after having the shit scared out of her.

Doctor Andr� clapped twice like he was a teacher of preps who had just made the decision about what everyone else was supposed to do. �Alright then,� he said in his infuriatingly calm way. �Time to pop back into the bus. I think we may have outstayed our welcome here slightly.�

Fuckin� oath.

The rest of the Acephalus Support Group trailed back through the shrub with the make-up on it and over the short fence to join the grey lady. Some of the people had marble-induced cuts on their arms from the shards that had up until about one minute ago constituted my poor statue�s head.

They all piled in, shut the big roller door thing that sounded like youth group camp, and drove off. They careened down the street.

Fuck them, man.

FUCK them.

I wasn�t too clear on how sentient statues operated; their biology and whatnot; what made them alive and all that, but this one seemed dead. It was lying there on the lawn. Its head had been blown off and the bits were all over the street. Myself, I had one of the very smallest bits land in my cheek. I could pull it out with my fingers.

It occurred to me that I�d given the statue a raw deal. It had been aloof and mysterious, and then it was handy and caring, and then I pretty much killed it even before it had become headless. A lump raised in my throat.

The fountain continued to cry mercury.

I wished that my parents could send me an e-mail. But they couldn�t.

I put the shard of statue head in my pocket and went inside. I checked my e-mail. Nothing more.

Not yet.

That night I would have a dreamless sleep.