(diaryland) November 30, 2009 - 9:56 p.m.

Second last chapter, man!

Chapter the Twenty-Second

I have to say, that was the most intense sleep I�d had for a whole year. Nobody was roaming around in my head (I guess you could say literally, in the case of Vaughn, and figuratively, with the ghosts of my parents not being constantly pushed down to the furthest reaches of my mind), nobody was roaming around my house; there was nothing that was in the way between me and my sleep. On the one hand, this was very good. On the other, I kind of missed the things that made sleep dynamic. I wished that Vaughn was still roaming around in my head, and finding out my secrets for me, and then telling me what they were. I missed the idea of my parents fighting to get hold of my memories that were always trying to be of the last day and nothing further behind.

I missed the statue. I felt bad for it. So, so bad. It had had a raw deal. There was nothing I could do now.

God, that �I ♥ MELISSA� guy was an arsehole.

But maybe he had just put a slow and agonising estrangement to a quick and merciful death.

I woke up at 9:30AM, unnaturally. I got a phone call on my mobile.

It was my boss, Biff.

�Hey, darls,� he said, far too loudly into the phone as was his style, �You sound like you�re had a big one last night.�

�If you�re referring to a big sleep, then I can confirm that,� I said, matter-of-factly. That was the best way to deal with Biff, otherwise things just got out of hand if you gave him one iota of encouragement.

�How have your holidays been?� he asked, quite genuinely.

�Fucked, man, fucked. But also relieving in some ways,� I said.

�Yeah, that�s holidays for ya. Back to the grind for you tomorrow, though. The sooner the better, I say. But you should do yourself a favour next time and go to Thailand, mate. It�s fuckin� awesome. I�m not sure if they have the same thing for chicks, but if you�re a guy and you go to certain places, well, all I�m saying is, it�s fuckin� awesome.�

�Sounds fuckin� awesome,� I said.

�Fuck yeah.�

�Yeah.�

After a brief pause, Biff got onto what he really wanted to say. �Look, sweetie, yeah, I was sorta wondering whether you could come and pick up your next job lot some time today if that�s OK with you. I�ve got these fucking ET type bikes that are a bit faulty and they keep trying to fly to the moon when no-one�s pressing their start buttons � they�re just flying around the warehouse and shit and falling into other bunches of bikes and, well, you know � it�s getting a bit shit.�

�Yeah, alright. I�ll come and get them this afternoon,� I said.

�Could you come a bit earlier than that, love?� Asked Biff in his sweetest gruff tones.

�Noon, then,� I said.

�Yeah, alright. That�ll do,� he said, fairly satisfied. �Fuckin� catch you in a bit, hey, mate?�

�Fuck yeah. Fuck,� I said.

�That�s my girl,� he said, then hung up.

Flying bicycles. That sounded OK. I guessed I could go back to my old life again. It could be an OK thing to be a truck driver that wasn�t running away from thoughts and was just driving around with a magic fountain at home and an e-mail buddy in another dimension.

And then I got another e-mail from unknown sender.

�Oh, goody,� I said to myself, and wiggled my fingers over the keyboard in anticipation.

I opened it. It said:

im going now or soon
i don�t know when
this kills

Shit.

I got another one.

can you jst tal k t o me ��������..?

The colour that had only just began to venture back onto my face drained out of it straight away.

I wrote back:

Yeah yeah sure of course! I have to go to work briefly at 12 though but I�ll come back straight away, OK.

Soon, I got another e-mail.

u cant go cos

I had to wait another hour for the next e-mail. During that hour, the sides of my head started to kill just from being full of tense thoughts and trying to imagine the rest of the sentence. I pretty much knew how it was going to end, though. Not quite, but I nearly guessed it.

This was it:

i �ll cease to exist & noone will be there
to �.. � be there

Well, I thought. There was a slim chance that Vaughn wouldn�t even make it to noon; that whatever he was right now would fade to static and that would be the end of it. Fuck, I�d be completely alone again. My holiday had been like some country that had weird extreme political parties, none of which were all that great vying for power. God.

I was sure Biff wouldn�t mind all that much if I was a bit late, or I I called him later on in the day, pretending to vomit through my hair whilst in the throes of a delayed hangover. Yeah, this was more important.

I wrote back:

Yep, I�ll stay. I�ll definitely stay.

I was typing so unnecessarily hard that my fingers hurt. Well, the index fingers, and that was all. The rest of my fingers were just there for decoration when it came to typing.

Vaughn replied almost immediately this time:

anastasia

which wasn�t very enlightening.

But then he said this:

havent you se en me before

I had seen him before, a bunch of times. I�d seen him dissolve into the fountain. He had lounged in my banana lounge in the backyard. I�d saved his image as my desktop picture. I�d observed him get kidnapped by over a hundred naked dancing ladies. He�d appeared from the shadows in my street. I�d seen his thin, lifeless legs dangle out of the end of my truck in my shame. I�d personally strapped him into a shipping crate and had done a really shit job of it. I had had an argument with him in the Gardenvale Bridge Club shed. I�d seen him threatened at gunpoint. I�d seen all these things.

I knew this wasn�t what he meant.

God knows what he meant, though. I didn�t exactly want to write, no, because that would be a little disheartening in such a time as this. I didn�t exactly want to write, yes, either, because then things could have gone a bit awkward when he would follow that up with something I had no hope of understanding because I didn�t have the faintest idea about what he was referring to.

It didn�t matter in the end, because while I was still wondering what to reply with, another e-mail popped into my inbox. This one said:

36�23�07.81�S 145 � 25 � 3 2.9 5 � E

Now that was slightly more confusing.

What is that?

I asked.

its
gps coord

Yeah, I knew of the concept of co-ordinates. Then another e-mail:

u got one rig h t ?

Sure I had a GPS. I was a truck driver. While some of the old guard stuck to a battered road atlas they�d had since the first day they were on the job, I�d always used a GPS because I didn�t have an enormous gut to rest it on while I was trying to find my way down the highways of the nation.

I didn�t have time to reply to Vaughn�s question because I was writing the co-ordinates down. He wrote something else first.

hey
theres a box in my old backyard under purple flowering tree i hope still
can you go get it & bring
it here i buried it a long time ago
it can be like my funeral or some shit

Then:

give it t o t he fou n t ain

This would be the last e-mail I ever got from Vaughn Bourbon. I guess you could say that the reason why this was so was partly my fault, but I only did it because I was panicking at the time.

I head a siren go off briefly somewhere very close to the vicinity of my front yard. The siren did that thing where it only did one round of its sine wave or whatever you say it is when the siren does that �woo-woo� thing, but this was only one �woo.� The thing where a policeperson is trying to be obnoxiously friendly.

I went out to investigate, however I did not have the intention of staying out there for very long.

I peeked out the front door. It was those sidling policewomen again. Goddamnit.

They saw me, especially the observy one.

The talky one reintroduced themselves. �Hello there again. This is Detective Rosie Joyner, and Detective Amelia Rubi-�

�Yeah, yeah, whatever, I know,� I yelled with absolutely no patience through the slit in the door. �I know you have to do your jobs and stuff, but could you skip me for about an hour or so and come back?�

�I�m afraid we can�t do that,� yelled the first one in a voice as calm as it can be when it�s being yelled with. �You, see, we have a warrant to investigate your premises. We�ve had strange reports from a witness who says that you�re getting your lawns mowed at all hours by an albino, and that you have toxic substances being recklessly used in your front yard, and that gunshots went off in the vicinity of your front porch last night. Can you verify any of this? And would you mind giving us access to your house at this point?�

I saw the curtains rustle on the other side of the road again. That goddamn lady.

�What did I ever do to her, except unwittingly win a house and thus gain ownership of a portal to another dimension?� I muttered under my breath.

�What was that?� The first policewoman asked.

�Nothing. Hey, I�ll let you in, but just give me a sec,� I said.

I started to make a beeline to my computer.

Because I went out of view the policewomen got a bit irate. I gave them about a minutes to figure out that they could come in through the next door neighbour�s driveway. They were probably smarter than me.

Nor did they shout, �Oi!� the way the police invariably do on The Bill when someone answers the door reasonably politely and then suddenly bolts for the back window of their flat. Nope, they were playing it hella cool.

So I kicked in the screen of my computer. I knew that this was the only way I could possibly avoid being arrested then and there. As soon as they�d see what was on there, and my search history, I would have been so busted it would have been insane. And that infernal lady from across the road who had smeared make-up all over my westringia fruiticosa would have tasted the sweet, sweet liquor of victory. I couldn�t have that.

I could hear the policewomen walking across the yard. I hoped they hadn�t heard that sound. Not that kicking an LCD screen really does make that much noise. It sure hurts, though.

I decided to pretend to be getting dressed or something. I ran to the rumpus room and made, �I�m dressing now, do-dee-do,� singing noises as normal people do before they go to work When I came out in my trucking uniform, the policewomen were standing over my computer. The obsery one was touching it.

�Hm, seems warm,� she said.

�Oh, heh, that � yes, I like to play a rousing game of Spider Solitaire every morning for about half an hour before I give up in defeat,� I said, cheerily.

I had already forgotten that the screen looked completely busted and contained the imprint of my small, but very obviously outlined foot as its centrepiece. If my story was true, it must have been a hell of a frustrating game that morning.

�Well, I think we�re probably going to get what we came for if we take this down to the station,� said the talky one. The observy one nodded.

�You mind if we take this?� They asked. They looked at me suspiciously, to see what my reaction would be, I guess.

I decided not to be too enthusiastic, nor too dejected about it, either. I was dying inside right now. I knew that I�d most likely never be able to talk to Vaughn Bourbon again. I could get a whole new computer, and set up my connection again, and then all I would get would be empty space. He�d probably be completely dissolved by now.

Shit, man. The two people who had coloured in my last three weeks were both gone. And one of them wasn�t even a person.

�Yeah, go ahead,� I said. �Feel free to pick up a bunch of gun shells on my lawn as well. I don�t want them anymore. I have to go to work now.�

I picked up my keys, my GPS, and left the house. The co-ordinates were in my pocket.