Babble

[Placid Dingo]

It's Christmas day, and it's silent. It's Christmas day, and your car swerves off the road. It's Christmas day and you're lonely, Christmas day and you're getting back with your old flame, Christmas day and you're lost in a strange land, Christmas day and you're staring into the eyes of the woman who's holding a gun to your head.
Christ was born on Christmas day, and was killed brutally on Easter. I was born on Easter. This can't be a good sign.
"It's OK," she says. Her body pulsates, jittering, nervous. Her face glistens with a thin slick of sweat, pupils bulging. She swallows, and gives a forced, demented grin.
"It's OK that it's ended up like this. Really. Sometimes things just go too far, and we can't let them go. Isn't that right? Sometimes odd things just happen to ordinary people, and everything goes strange. It's OK. Things just have a way of getting out of hand like this. They just have to run their course."
I shake my head violently. This isn't right, I try to show. I tap my temple. Think about it. Spinning my finger around my ear. This is crazy.
Communication is easier, when you have a tongue.
She aims the gun.

Two weeks ago, and I'm standing outside my mother's house, watching it burn to the ground. The cloak of fire is tearing apart the building, a huge angry explosion of reds and oranges and yellows, all crushing the house apart, licking it over with their acid tongues. Like a dying silhouette, the house stands, black and defeated, as its victor covers it with a royal cloak of flame, dancing a victory on its charred corpse. From the centre of the flickering mass, a heatwave pulsates out, slicking all nearby skin with a layer of sweat, pouring fumes down my neck, heating my body, until I feel like an abused hot water bottle, ready to pull off my head and pour my bubbling remains into a refreshing bucket of ice.
Tiny yellow men run around, with long black hoses, squirting water almost pointlessly at the angry red storm. Tiny yellow men don't stand a chance against this sort of monster.
It's Christmas day, and you receive the gift you've always wanted.
It's six years later, and your favourite present is on fire.
My mother turns to me, and puts her arm around my side.
"It's not so bad," she says. Tears are dripping out her eyes, pouring down her foundation slick cheeks. She's putting on her act, her famous martyrdom act. Jesus had nothing on her. Nailed to a cross? Try nailed to a cactus. Try nailed to a flaming stake. Any way you could suffer, she could always suffer more.
She sniffs.
"It could have been a lot worse, you know. There could have been people in there. I could have lost Jack. I don't know what I'd do, then. I can't imagine what I'd do if I lost him. And I can't think what I'd have to say if Tahnee ever got hurt. I couldn't live with myself, I really couldn't."
She pauses long enough for me to soak in just how selfless she really is. The she gives a great sigh. Then another. Bursts into tears, and lies sobbing on my shoulder. I pat her arm gently. Staring at the flames, like orange water, dribbling over the edge of the house, leaving a smoking black stain over everything they touch.
This is the house that Jack bought.
I pat my mothers shoulder, and slowly pull away, prying her suckered fingers off my arm. I take out my red book, and a pen and write.
Where is Tahnee?
My mother points over to where a large broken down Kombi sits, suspended on bricks, peeling white paint flickering with the glorious reflection of our house.
"She practically lives in that thing these days," says Mum. "She found it at a junkyard and Jack dragged it home for her. Couldn't move it now. It'd fall apart... oh God... oh this can't all be happening..."
I look at mum's collapsing emotional state. I rub the stub of my tongue against the bottom of my mouth. I cast a glance towards the house, where a beam collapses in a burst of sparks.
Everything falls apart, eventually.
Mum's about to latch onto me again with her little barnacle hands, but I duck under her radar, tapping my chest and pointing towards the Kombi. She nods, a resentful look on her face, a kind of 'oh, he let me down again' expression.
I walk up to it and bang on the door.
"Who is it?" yells out Tahnee. Her voice is of the angry-teenager variety, indignant with an edge of sullen bitterness. I knock again.
"Who is it?" she yells again. This has become tiresome very quickly. I try a patterned knock.
BUM bum ba BUM bum!
"Piss off!" she yells. I pound the door. She unlocks it, heaving it part way open, ready to annihilate whoever dares disturb her peace with an angry squirt of venom. Her face appears in the crack, a tiny strand of her blue hair drifting in front of her eyes. She stares into me.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Here's one I prepared earlier. I open my notebook to the third page.
I am Hugo Dell, 22 years old.
Son of Jack and Judith Dell.
Brother of Sarah Dell.
Friend of Ashton Moray.
I have no tongue, and find it difficult to speak.
Please do not let that discourage you from speaking to me.
I will probably reply to you in writing.
I hope we can be friends
The page is covered in tiny stars, chopped out from a doodle my sister drew when she was younger. It's strange like that. Back when we were growing up, we were so close. Now, what? I'm the skeleton in her closet and she's the scribble on my welcome note.
Tahnee reads it, twice, brow furrowing. I look at her carefully. A tiny blue gem is stuck in her nose stud. There is a short scar on her chin.
This is the girl, who set fire to the house, that Jack bought.
"Come in," she says, opening the door. I enter, observing the interior. Posters on the wall, of naked women, torn from magazines. One is of a naked anorexic girl, felating a sausage. I recognise it immediately – Idolization it's called, by a guy called Ray Mann. The guy's a fucking hack. I raise an eyebrow.
"It's not his best, but it can be hard to find his prints," says Tahnee. "He's exhibited at your gallery, I think. Have you met him?"
I shake my head.
The Gallery has signed a deal for his next show to be shown here first.
I show here the message. I considered doing it in slanty writing to insinuate that I'm speaking in a dismayed or unenthused tone of voice, but I've come to realise that people don't pick up on these kind of obscurities.
She holds out a packet of cigarettes, looking at me with eyes that could be either questioning or challenging me.
"You smoke?"
I shake my head. She shrugs and chucks the packet aside.
"Me neither," she says. "Or, maybe. I dunno, I haven't decided yet."
I give her a quizzical look, but her face is a blank sheet of paper, that refuses to give her away. She is an enigma, any clues to solving her lie in that sludgy grey organ hidden under her blue hair, to be distributed discerningly by her alone. She leans over to an esky, and opens the lid, pulling out a Vodka Cruiser.
"Want?" she says. I shake my head. She shrugs, and pulls the lid off hers. It's green.
I continue looking around. Blue beads hang down from the roof, piles of books and magazines lie all over the ground. I sit down in a small black beanbag. In front of me, stuck up on a seat, thirteen pages long, is the poem Mum has been telling me about.
This is the poem, 'twas made by the girl, that set fire to the house, that Jack bought.
"I've heard a lot about you," Tahnee says. "Judith talks about you all the time. She's like, besotted by you."
I'm her son. Mothers are like that.
Then,
May I read your poem?
"Not now," she says. "Don't read in other people presence. It's rude." She swings a mouthful of Vodka.
Her voice, and indeed her manner, suggest no hint of self-consciousness. Rather, she seems to pick out the first thought in her head and shoot it out to whomever is present.
Don't read in other people's presence - I give a tiny grin, and look down at my notebook.
Irony never tasted so bad.
Actually, without tastebuds, irony doesn't taste like a good deal at all.
Tahnee is oblivious to my internal monologue. She takes another sip of her Vodka, and yawns, then continues to talk.
"Anyway. I'm Tahnee, like you probably already new. Tahnee Natalie Elliot the First. Appalling name. Jack Elliot's daughter. You've met him before, right? Like at the boxing clubs and shit?"
I nod.
"He reckons he you were a shithouse fighter. But just act like I didn't tell you that hey? I wasn't meant to."
I nod.
There is a brief uncomfortable silence. Tahnee finds a cotton reel lying on the ground, and throws it against the wall, where it rebounds and hits me in the side of the head. Tahnee laughs, and I give a faltering grin.
Then, more silence.
I pull out my red book.
Why did you set fire to the house?
She looks at it, then at me, and shrugs.
"I can't read your handwriting," she says, barely bothering to disguise the lie, and takes a sip of the Cruiser.
"So," she says, "You've got not tongue."
I nod, but it seems redundant.
"I'll tell you about the house if you tell me about the tongue."
I open up my book, and flip open a few pages. The question isn't uncommon, so it helps to be prepared. I find the page where I've written my story, and pass the book to Tahnee, who snatches it greedily.
The story of my tongue
(Or why I sound like a tortured cat when I attempt to talk)

Once upon a time there was a man called Hugo Dell. Hugo loved to go running. He loved the heat saturated air of the Brisbane Summer. Every afternoon, he would run to the back of the city, all along the dirty grimy backstreets. The walls there oozed grime and dirt, the ground was covered in sharps and broken glass and the benches were covered in homeless drunkards. Crazy people would live there, and would go by muttering to themselves. They said things like "Oh those rotten bastards, I'll show them they think they can do it to the old ones, oh but they'll see, my William will show them, my Willie will make them see sense," and continue talking well into the distance.
Hugo was a photographer. He enjoyed taking pictures of this area. He thought that by showing people pictures of the less known sides of life, he could educate them about what life was like for people who were less fortunate than themselves. He often took photos of sad looking people.
In this area lived a man whose name was Velvet Martini. He was a member of the Obrion Phariax cult. His leader had commanded them all to do certain tasks. Martini's task was to find a man, and slice off his tongue.
As Hugo ran by that afternoon, it was to be a day unlike any other. Suddenly, Velvet jumped out at him, pushed him over, and with a wicked grin, pulled out a knife. Hugo screamed, thinking he was going to die. As his mouth opened, Velvet grabbed his tongue and cut it off. Hugo ran away, running to the hospital, with half a tongue.
THE END.
She finishes reading the story, and looks at me, studying my face.
"How much of this is true," she asks.
Most,
then,
Tell me about the house.
"OK," she says, scratching her neck. "You know Scientology?"
I furrow my brow, nodding.
"Well believe it or not, I'm no mere mortal, but instead am the test tube creation of L Ron Hubbard and Lord Xenu. Due to this alien DNA, I receive secret telepathic messages from the masters of the universe, and when they told me to burn the house I had no choice. Like Donny Darko."
I wanted the truth. That's a lie.
"Well, I guess that makes us even then hey? Little lies for sneaky spies. Velvet Martini. That is so bullshit."
The words are harsh, but the manner is friendly. She pulls out a cigarette, lights it with some difficulty, and breaths in. Almost instantly she coughs, and drops the cigarette into her half empty Cruiser.
"Fuck. Jesus. OK, well there goes that idea." She straightens, looks at me. "So. Did you actually know anything about the guy, or did you make it all up?"
I found out a fair bit. Velvet Martini was another guy's name that I used for the story though.
"What's his real name then? The guy in the story?"
I give a wobble of my hand in reply. I really would rather not discuss that.
"I said, what's his name. Tell me or I'll never tell you about the house."
There's something about her that compels me to her, something that I can't quite put into words. Some stupid gut feeling; though by now I've learnt to trust my stupid gut.
Can you keep a secret?
"Yeah right O."
I open my red book to page three again, and point to a name. Ashton Moray.
This is the man, who cut off the tongue, of the man who wants, to read the poem, 'twas made by the girl, that set fire to the house, that Jack bought.
Ashton Moray and I had so many good times together.
Ashton Moray taught me how to play Blackjack.
Ashton Moray never expected things to turn out this way.

This is the first chapter of the 'other' piece I've been working on for a handful of years. Feedback welcome.

I'll link to the whole thing when Scribd stops being lame.