[I’ve taken the plunge and launched my latest novel, (still in manuscript form and needing beta readers), on Wattpad. You can check out the first chapter of Diamonds in the Cave there and give feedback, dare I say, honest. Once the book is completed with helpful suggestions from my readers, with hopes that it is the best in quality that it can be, I will be doing the usual and self-publishing on Amazon.]
The Enemy Within
Diary of Minna Thumm
Life, my life undercover as Anni, wife of Andreas (Günter), was ideal. We fitted together like violin and a bow, the notes of our personality blending together, in perfection.
On this pristine planet, we work hard and enjoy the warm friendly atmosphere that the Wendish community afforded. Boris had kidnapped these little-known villagers of Luthertal as they travelled along the River Elbe on their way to Hamburg. This small but pious clan of Wends had planned to emigrate to Australia. But Boris who led the band of travelers had other plans for them. The IGSF (Intergalactic Space Force) rescued the Wends from slavery and being swamped by cockroaches at the hands of Boris. As Earth, in the early 21st Century, had changed so much since they had left, the Wends chose to settle on the Pilgrim Planet.
We lived the incognito life of disguise, the young husband and wife team, Andreas and Anni. Soon I was with child making our lives complete.
After all Boris was dead. Our duty to the IGSF had become redundant. Minna was dead to all except those in the know—my mother, Dr. Mario Leonardo and his wife Monica and Günter’s sister, Salome. Günter according to all who knew him, (just a handful of people), was some unknown loser frittering away his life in some forgotten corner on Earth.
On the Pilgrim Planet, we were free to live undisturbed while keeping an eye on those partners in crime, Maggie and Tails. I lived to avenge the murders of my brother, John, and others of the IGSF team who had died fighting the War against Boris.
As for my brother John’s death, I am certain Maggie and Tails were responsible—just have to prove it. We’d befriended the pair, and gradually, had made progress on the dossier pertaining to their guilt. Still that crucial piece of evidence eluded us. Meanwhile, my mother, Frieda Thumm as Admiral roamed the wormholes of the galaxy mopping up the mess left behind by Boris.
My father, Wilhelm Thumm had also died; killed when he was driving my Mazda. He was “gunna get round to fixing the brakes” but…
Minna and Gunter live the idyllic life as under-cover agents in the village of the Wends…Minna is building up a case against her enemies Maggie and Tails, and suspected of being Boris agents…
…But when the IGSF (Intergalactic Space Force) sends Gunter on a secret mission in the war against Boris, Minna alone and vulnerable encounters the son of Boris…
Their idyllic life unravels…as does the Wend community.
Incited by her enemies, Tails and Maggie with fear and
superstition, the Wends succumb to a full-scale witch hunt…and Minna becomes their prime Target.
Gunter hobbled up the path to his house. His feet squashed into shoes too small for him. Just before he entered, Gunter examined his reflection in the window. He touched his pink cheeks and admired the sculptured perfection—the high forehead with no acne, the strong chin with no spots but a beard like a man, and hair straight golden and manageable. He patted the top of his head. ‘Hmm, a bit thin on top,’ he mumbled. ‘Oh, well, now I can be happy that not even my brother Johann was perfect.’
Grandmother flung open the door. Gunter slammed against the window. The wood panel blocked her view of Gunter. ‘Now what am I going to do? The dinner is burnt,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Forgotten something?’ Boris said as he peeped around the corner of the house. He handed Gunter a pile of folded clothes. ‘Can’t go around the village dressed like a boy, now can you.’ Boris then vanished into the night.
Once Grandmother withdrew back into the house, Gunter tip-toed to the outhouse and changed into Johann’s dapper tights, striped breeches and white shirt with the obligatory lacy sleeves. As he strolled to the front door, he heard screams and then a slap. Then he observed Anna run down the path, and a gangly looking fellow in underclothes loping after her.
Gunter pushed open the door and waltzed into the kitchen. Grandmother continued to sweep the cracked black and white tiles. A cloud of dust chased her around the room as she swept. ‘Your soup is on the stove, Johann.’
Salome leaned on the balustrade of the stairs, her blonde locks pasted to her perspiring temples. She shook her head. ‘At the inn again, I presume.’
Gunter tugged at the hem of his shirt as Johann always did and said what Johann always said, ‘A man has got to do what a man has got to do.’
The door burst open and his brother stumbled in sporting a red welt on his cheek.
Salome launched into him like a fish-monger’s wife on an errant husband. ‘What have you been doing? How hard is it to find your brother? No supper for you. Off you go—bed—go on!’ She grabbed Grandmother’s broom and chased Johann in the form of Gunter into his sleeping quarters with Johann crying protests all the way.
Gunter hid his urge to smile behind his hand.
After helping himself to pumpkin soup and bread, Gunter yawned and mumbled his excuses for an early night and trotted upstairs to the bed he shared with his older now younger brother. Oh what a night it would be, sleeping on the less lumpy side for once, hogging the quilt and tormenting his brother. It was payback time.
The benefits of being Johann did not stop there. Next day, as he strolled in the village streets, men tipped their hats, women weaved out of their way through the crowd over to him and gifted him with fruit, home-made honey biscuits and apple cake. Milk maids, those same ones who reviled him the day before, this time, fluttered their lashes, blushed and shot him sideways glances. The tallest of the three sidled up to him as he stood talking to the tailor as they discussed his jacket for the May Day dance, and she pressed a note into his hand. Mein Gott, what a life!
Meanwhile his brother languished under the whip of Grandmother’s broom when she heard he’d been expelled from school—again. Ah, sweet revenge.
Then the icing on the kuchen—lunch with Anna. He arranged a picnic by the river. Blue skies, tulips blooming, green grass, the birds singing and the bees humming. What a picture! What a day with is maiden in his arms. Anna talked non-stop the whole two hours. Gunter as his brother, held his tongue when she prattled on about how much she didn’t like Johann’s younger brother, especially after the prank he pulled the previous night.
‘He’s creepy,’ she said and shuddered, ‘he tried to grope me. Ugh!’
Her words stabbed at his insides. He realised as Gunter he never had a chance.
After Gunter walked Anna back to the school where she helped her father, he spent the afternoon brooding, drinking beer at the Bierhaus until he was almost sick. Then he tramped through the forest alone. The novelty of being Johann had worn off and revenge didn’t seem as sweet anymore.
At the dinner table Johann as Gunter raged. ‘I’m not Gunter,’ he yelled and stabbed the table with his fork. ‘What is wrong with you people?’
Their mother made one of her rare appearances downstairs but she seemed far away and unmoved by Johann’s tantrum.
Gunter decided he had to leave. His face tingled as he slipped out of the house and hastened to the clearing with the moss-covered log; the meeting place designated by Boris.
The ground glowed with warped and weird shapes under the strange luminous disk that hovered over the hill. No frogs croaked. No birds chirped. The air was still and cold. Even the cows refrained from braying.
Gunter sat on the log and waited. Time seemed to stop in the silence.
A beam shimmered from the disk. Gunter rubbed his eyes and blinked. Boris materialised in the centre of the beam. He appeared cockroach-shaped, then, as he strode toward Gunter, he morphed into human-form.
‘Well, now, Herr Fahrer, have you decided?’ Boris asked.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Well, then.’
‘More than anything else, I want to be handsome, brave, attractive to the ladies like my brother Johann. But, I want to be myself, not someone else.’
Boris raised one side of the hairy eye-brow that spanned his forehead. ‘Very well, then.’
‘And one more thing, you know, like a package?’
‘Yes?’
‘Could I, with this new face, have a new life, say like in the Great South Land?’
‘Hmm,’ Boris nodded, ‘that can be arranged, if you wish. But…’
‘What?’
Boris coughed and flapped his wings. ‘You’re not going to fit in with the people who live there at the moment. I’d say wait until I’ve finished with Great Britain…’ He paced the clearing with his hands tucked behind his back. ‘In the meantime, I could take you on an adventure up there, into the far reaches of the galaxy. Consider it an added bonus, seeing what no man on this planet has seen before. What do you say?’
‘Ja, voll!’
‘Just sign here.’
Boris presented Gunter with the tablet, its screen chock full of tiny black lines. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’s all routine. Just basically says you take responsibility for your decisions. Just covering my back and yours. You know, some civilisations can be quite litigious.’ Boris handed a fine pointy stick to Gunter. ‘Use this pen to sign your name.’
Gunter wrote his name using the fine script he had learnt at school, and within seconds, he sat in a velvet-covered chair on the bridge of Boris’ ship. The walls shone with fresh white paint, the silver instruments gleamed, and the furnishings were scented with potpourri. He studied the sun as it shrank to just a speck of light amongst many specks of light.
Boris reclined on his seat, fully armoured, fully cockroach. ‘You should notice the changes in your form soon, my fellow.’
Gunter tingled all over and he glanced at his hand. His warm, fuzzy sensation turned to cold hard panic.
‘My hand!’ he cried wriggling his three elongated fingers. ‘I’m turning grey!’
‘So, there you go,’ Boris said as he adjusted his light shields. ‘Right on schedule.’
Gunter picked up a looking-glass placed at his side and his hand trembled. He glared bug-eyed at his reflection. ‘I’m turning into a praying-mantis.’
‘You didn’t specify you wanted to be human.’
‘But a stick-insect? I’m hideous!’
Boris folded his four hands over his barrel chest. ‘So? Most Greys are females. So you, as a male, will be most attractive to them.’
Gunter unstrapped himself and jumped from his seat. He ran to the viewing screen. With his long fingers he traced the planets and sun of his solar system. ‘I have changed my mind. I want to go home.’
Boris smacked his lips and readjusted his bottom’s position on his seat. ‘Too late. You’ve signed the contract. Didn’t you read the fine print? All choices are final and cannot be changed.’
Read more of the consequences of Gunter’s choices, the adventure, the war against Boris. Discover the up close, personal and rather awkward relationship between Gunter and that nasty piece of cockroach-alien work Boris in my novels…
He sniffed and observed the slim man with a pale face and a monk’s haircut. He held a thin tablet similar to a slate under his arm.
‘Doesn’t look like nothing,’ the man said.
‘Nothing you can help me with,’ Gunter replied. ‘You are the magic man, are you not?’
The man threw back his small head. ‘Hardly magic, my son. Merely science. You have heard of Physics?’
‘Yeah..but…’
‘Tell you what, you look like you’ve had a rough trot.’ The man took what looked like a thin book from under his arm. The book had a shiny surface. ‘How about I make your day.’ He ran his finger down the front of the book.
‘Who are you?’
‘Just call me, Herr Roach.’
‘Herr Roth? Mr Red?’
‘No, Roach, as in Cockroach?’
‘Huh?’
‘Never mind—call me Boris,’ the man answered as he cleared his throat.
A whirring sound came from behind him and for a moment Gunter thought he saw dark wings of lace flutter and then snap into the man’s back. Were his eyes playing tricks on him?
Boris’ mouth spread into a wide grin with teeth in a neat row like keys on a piano. ‘Now where were we? As I was saying, anything you want, anything at all. Whatever you desire, your wish is my—oh, dear, that sounds a bit lame. Now, what is your greatest desire and I will make it so.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes, I will.’
Boris balanced the book on the tip of his finger. ‘Money, gold, wisdom—women and so on—you know the drill. Whatever.’ He flicked the book front with his finger and made it spin through the air around their heads.
Gunter, his eyes wide, gazed as the object slowed and fluttered into a butterfly and then settled on the log where he’d been sitting.
‘Wow! How did you do that?’
‘I’m still awaiting your answer. Anything you want.’
‘But it changed shape. You made it come alive.’
‘Never mind that—anything at all, it’s yours.’
‘Aber, what are you?’ Gunter asked. He tried to catch the butterfly but it flew high above his head.
‘Oh, that’s hardly important,’ Boris said. ‘Come on, I’m waiting for your answer.’
‘I want to know,’ Gunter reached for Boris, ‘where you are from.’
‘Not from this world,’ Boris stepped away from him and his arm became a tentacle and whipped Gunter’s hand. ‘Now hurry up! Tell me.’
Gunter rubbed his fingers. ‘Are you a demon?’
‘Oh, Herr Fahrer, how could you think such a thing? I’m insulted.’
‘Ja, aber for a man, you have some strange appendages.’
‘That’s because, I’m evolved, my race is superior to yours.’ Boris narrowed his beady eyes and antennae sprang out from the top of his head. With his mouth closed he fed thoughts into Gunter’s mind. ‘I don’t need a voice or a mouth. I can communicate my thoughts to you. So much simpler, don’t you think?’
Boris clicked his fingers and the butterfly floated into his open hands and turned once again into a tablet.
‘Now what will you have,’ Boris demanded with his thoughts, ‘Anything you want.’
The young man scanned the darkening sky and then spotted the first evening star glowing on the horizon.
‘Nay,’ Boris said, ‘further than Venus. Much further. The other side of the galaxy, if you must know.’
‘Galaxy?’
‘Come on, I’m waiting, I haven’t got all century. Then in thoughts almost a whisper. ‘Got slaves to catch, planets to conquer.’
‘What? Did you say something?’
‘Are you a dumkopf? Tell me what you want!’
Dumkopf! Dumkopf! Gunter hated being ridiculed. No, he wasn’t stupid. He sighed. ‘I hate my life. And you know, I hate this world I live in. I hate who I am. No one will miss me if I go.’ He trod towards Boris. ‘Can I go to your world?’
Boris edged away. ‘Well, now, there’s the thing. My world sort of exploded. You could say I’m homeless.’
‘Oh, sorry to hear that.’
‘Any other suggestions?’ Boris’ eyes glowed in the navy blue of early night. ‘I can change you like I did the booklet, if you like.’
Gunter picked at his nails. ‘I would not like to be a butterfly.’
‘You can be anything—anyone.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, no trouble at all.’
‘I could be a different person. No big nose. No brown curly hair. No pimples.’
‘Certainly, if that’s what you want,’ Boris said and flashed his wings.
Gunter pondered. Maybe demons do exist. Maybe his grandmother was right. ‘I don’t know.’ A shiver coursed down his spine. ‘I think I should be getting home. I am late for dinner.’ As he backed away, an owl hooted.
‘What about a free trial? Can do no harm, Herr Fahrer.’ The man-beast followed Gunter down the path. ‘Just one day, no obligation.’
Gunter stopped and turned. ‘Only one day?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said.’
‘Anything? Anything I want?’
‘Yes.’
Gunter stroked his chin. ‘Well, then, can you make me into my brother, Johann?’
‘Yes, I can do that.’
Boris pulled a stick from his stockings and plugged it into the booklet. He tapped the cover and read it for a few minutes. Then from a pocket in his cape, he pulled out a bottle. He tapped the bottle, picked out a pill, snapped it in half and handed the half-pill to Gunter. ‘Eat this and think of your brother, Johann,’ Boris said.
Gunter gulped down the pill. The slimy coating left a fishy after-taste on his tongue. He licked his lips, he had an idea. ‘I know, even better. Johann can become me. Then he’ll know how it feels.’
Boris rolled his eyes. ‘You’re a bright one, you should’ve thought about that before I gave you the Blob Fish pill.’
‘What? You can’t?’
‘I can,’ Boris said with a sigh, ‘but it will be a challenge. I do have the other half of the pill, so we’ll see what we can do.’ He rubbed the pill fragment between his finger and thumb. ‘Now, then I better hurry to do what you have requested. So, my boy, run along home, by the time you get there, you’ll be Johann.’
Gunter turned to go.
‘Just one more thing, where exactly is your brother?’
‘In the barn, always in the barn.’
‘Very well, enjoy!’ Boris said as wings sprouted from his back, he rose into the air and buzzed all the way up the hill to the barn.
Gunter pelted up the path to his home on the hill.
[…to be continued, next week for the stunning conclusion.]
Go on a reading binge and discover the up close, personal and rather awkward relationship between Gunter and that nasty piece of cockroach-alien work Boris in…
The planks of wood that resembled a door scraped on the stone floor as Gunter entered. Wailing from above greeted him, as did the damp musty smell. A rat scuttled along the wall of peeling rose wallpaper and through a crack. Gunter feared that with the damp and vermin, it would not be long before the family succumbed to Typhus. He’d witnessed the fate of his merchant friends in the village—all eight of them gone in one winter. Their two-storey home in the village square had to be demolished as no one would buy it.
Gunter strode to the fireplace, the flames crackling on the wood chips comforted him. He stood with his back to the fire and watched his grandmother, Sophie emerge from the kitchen wiping her hands on her once-white apron.
‘What’s wrong with her today?’ Gunter asked.
‘Says nurse tried to poison her,’ Sophie said as she glanced at the tall Nordic woman scrubbing a pot in the kitchen wash basin.
His mother’s screams warbled, resonating from the room above them and bouncing off the rose-printed walls. Gunter and his grandmother looked at each other. They knew they couldn’t compete with the Banshee screaming. Gunter heard his sister cooing, calming the troubled beast.
The screams subsided to moans. Sophie wiped her damp brow. ‘We really need to see the priest and get those demons out.’
Gunter tapped his temple. ‘It is nothing to do with demons, Grossmutter. Mutti has something wrong with her mind. Her brain is kaput.’
His grandmother ignored his comment. She manoeuvred her ample form through the labyrinth of tables, armchairs and Gunter’s latest model of the solar system to where Gunter stood. In her hand she cupped yellow powder. ‘See? I got this from the market. It’s called Turmeric. This is what I put in her soup that Nurse gave her. It is a spice from India. It is meant to heal Mutti.’ She lifted the powder to her nose and sniffed. ‘It is wonderful! I have some in my food every day and I swear it has cured my aching bones.’
‘Really?’ Gunter pinched a sample and licked it. ‘It does not taste so special.’
‘But when you put it in—’
The wailing started again. Gunter sighed. Grandmother waddled to the table and began scrubbing it. Despite his sister, Salome’s pleading and urging to placate her mother’s rages, the screams rose to a crescendo.
Gunter shut his mind to the agonised cries and dreamed of a faraway land, the Great South Land. His father had told him about this land. As a lad, Gunter’s age, his father had been a deckhand on a Portuguese ship that had explored the South Seas. The ship had been destroyed in a storm off the Great South continent. His father never really explained how he survived or returned to his home in the Schwartzwald. Most of his family and friends did not believe the salty sea tales of August Fahrer—they were just his fantasy. But Gunter believed his father and he dreamed of one day running away to Hamburg, joining a crew and sailing to that faraway land down on the underside of the world. He also dreamed he’d take Anna with him…so what if she was eighteen and he was only fourteen. So what if she barely noticed him in the classroom. What did it matter she was Herr Crankendinger’s daughter?
‘Gunter!’ Grandmother called, ‘Gunter!’
‘Huh?’ His mother’s warbling like a sad song still rang in his ears.
‘Go and find your brother, Johann. Dinner is ready.’
Gunter tore out of the mad house. He galloped across the yard full of chicks and hens, sending the birds flapping and squawking in all directions. The barn—Johann, since he’d returned from the army, was always in the barn. What did he do in the barn all day when he was home on furlough? Just sharpen and buff his swords? He had other weaponry, but Gunter hadn’t been allowed close enough to examine those items. Johann never allowed Gunter in the barn. That was his domain to sharpen and buff and admire his weapons. Johann possessed a cart that he stored at the side of the barn. But he neglected the cart and it sat, exposed to the rain and snow, wood rotting, leaning on its broken axle and its cracked wheel propped against the shattered side.
Gunter patted the cart-wreck and then poked his head through the wide opening and into the darkness. The stink of horse manure mingled with straw hit his nostrils. He looked around and blinked.
‘Johann!’ he called. ‘Dinner is ready.’
Gunter stepped into the darkness. He noticed propped against the wall a small canon-like weapon. He’d heard about such weapons. What were they called? He stepped towards the weapon, his fingers itching to touch it.
‘Johann,’ he said and paused.
Sounds of shuffling and muted giggles filtered down from above. Gunter jumped back from the weapon and looked up. He allowed his eyes to adjust.
More scuffles. Whispers. Was his brother not alone?
‘Johann. You must come to dinner,’ Gunter said.
‘What?’ Johann poked his head over the edge of the loft.
Gunter stared. A scene in slow motion played out on the mezzanine floor. A barrel teetered. It tipped. And then it toppled over the edge.
‘Watch out!’ Johann said, his vocal reflexes delayed by the shock.
The barrel hurtled down. Gunter woke from his brain freeze. Still in slow motion, the barrel cartwheeled in the air towards him. Frame by frame. Gunter’s short life flashed on a screen in his mind.
‘Nay!’ Gunter shrieked and he jumped.
The barrel crashed on the packed dirt of floor, beer exploding and splashing all over his white shirt, leather pants and black shoes staining their square metal buckles.
Johann appeared leaning over the ledge and buttoning up his blouse. ‘Oops!’
‘Was is los?’ a woman’s voice asked what’s wrong?
Gunter caught his breath, as if his heart had jumped out of his throat. He knew that woman’s voice, but he didn’t want to believe it was her.
‘What is going on?’ he asked.
‘This is your fault, Gunter,’ Johann said as he glared at the rivers of beer coursing outside, rivers of blood reflected in the scarlet rays of the setting sun. ‘If you hadn’t interrupted us. How many times have I told you, you are not to come into my barn?’
‘But what are you doing up there?’
‘Never you mind.’
Her small oval face loomed from the darkness behind Johann’s.
Gunter choked. His mouth went dry. ‘Anna?’ he said, his voice cracked into a squeak.
Johann flicked his fingers at Gunter. ‘Get out of here!’
Gunter took a few steps back. ‘Aber…’
‘And don’t you tell Grossmutter! It’s none of her business!’
‘Why?’ Gunter asked. ‘She’ll want to know about the mess…with the beer.’
‘Just don’t. Go! Mach Schnell!’
Gunter backed out of the barn. Blinded by the light and eyes clouded with moisture, he stumbled into the forest.
He howled and hated himself. He sounded like his mother wailing and carrying on but the crying took on a force of its own and refused to stop. Now who would he take to the Great South Land? Now who would share his dreams of adventure and fantasies of travel to the stars?
How could Anna do this to him? She’d painted his portrait, without the pimples and a less prominent Hoch-Blauen nose. Gunter blew his nose on his sleeve. So what! It’s already soiled by the beer. He thought Anna liked him. He’d convinced himself Anna understood him—Anna intelligent, artistic, hair golden like the sun, and eyes dazzling blue like a lake on a summer’s day. One day Anna would get to know him and love him…but no. He whimpered. ‘Johann!’ He smashed his fist into the moss on the log. ‘Always Johann!’
Go on a reading binge and discover the up close, personal and rather awkward relationship between Gunter and that nasty piece of cockroach-alien work Boris in…
[In response to today’s prompt, a friend is someone you can trust as they trust you. They are there for you, as you are there for them. You can share almost anything about yourself with them, and they can share anything with you and feel safe. You can be yourself with them and they can be themselves with you. With some friends, no matter how long it has been between seeing each other, you pick up the conversation with them from where you left off the last time you saw them.
This story is about the future and friendship.]
MESSAGE FROM MY FUTURE ME
“Grandma, can I excuse the table?” I asked.
Grandma chuckled. “You mean, be excused from the table, dear.”
I nodded and then pushed my chair from the old wooden table.
“Yes, you may, but don’t go too far,” Grandma said. “Go only to the end of the road and then you must turn back.”
I escaped out the back door and down the gravel driveway. The street spanned before me, begging adventure. Sunday lawns green, pungent with fresh Saturday clippings piled behind an assortment of fences.
“Go away, will you,” she said in her grimy blue dress. She leaned over the stone wall and pushed me.
I brushed off her greasy prints and walked on, leaving the willow tree and that girl snarling in the shade behind me. As I strolled into the sun, I ran my hand over cracked rendered walls, rattling cyclone fences and peering through the oleander bushes for signs of life in quiet houses.
“Don’t go over the road,” Grandma’s voice warned in my head.
No, I won’t. I rubbed my bottom in memory of the Belair Sunday school picnic adventure when my brother lost me. Promise! Careful not to step on the lines in the pavement. Bad luck. I tiptoed and danced along the pavement in my pink ballerina shoes.
A shadow wriggled over the pavers. Stobie pole to my right, plastered its stunted midday image on the asphalt. I halted. Casting my focus up, I spied this big girl. I squealed and clapped my hands over my mouth. This lady-girl was dressed all in lace and brown velvet as if in Grandma’s clothes.
“Hello, you must be Lee-Lee.”
“Why did you know my name?” I pointed at her; rude, I know. “Ha, ha! Why are you wearing funny clothes?”
She blushed and rubbed her stubby fingers over the velvet. “They’re trendy where I come from.” She smiled and straightened her long dress that swept past her ankles. “Actually, where I come from, I know a lot about you.”
“Why?”
“Because I have the same name as you.”
“So? I know more than you do. You’re dumb. So there, ner!” I planted my hands on my hips and poked out my tongue.
“That’s no way to talk about yourself.”
“Huh?” I pulled at my pigtail and chewed the ends of my hair.
“Elementary girl.” She flicked her long blonde strands and smirked. “I am the future you. In fact, I know more than you do because I know what’s going to happen to you.”
“Future me?” I scratched my cheek and screwed up my nose. “What does future mean?”
“Oh!” I wiggled a loose tooth. “Does that mean your teeth all fell out? Did you get grown-up teeth or did you get them all pulled out and get false teeth like Grandma’s?” I zoomed up to Future Me’s face and ogled at her mouth. “Come on, show me your false teeth.”
She bared her perfect row of pearly whites and nudged me back. “They are real. Orthodontically corrected, but real.”
“Arthur—what?”
“I had braces on my teeth.”
“Why? Were they crippled?”
“No, they were crooked.”
“Ugh! Crooked teeth.” I turned from her and poked stones with the point of my shoe. “I don’t think I like being you. Grandma clothes, crooked teeth that need Arthur’s braces. I’ll never be like you. You’re just pretending. ‘Sides, how could I be you?”
I squinted at this tall slim blonde who transferred her weight from one leg to the other. I noticed the worn back-pack groaning full of books, straps straining to pull the load from her waist. Future Me stroked her chin between her thumb and forefinger. “Well, it’s hard to explain to someone as little as you. You’re in Prep, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m a big schoolgirl, now.” I thrust my chest forward and with hands each side of my tummy, swung my hips.
“Well, big schoolgirl, Lee-Lee, to put it simply, it’s called T.T.T—thought, time, transportation.”
“What then?” I watched my pink dress swish as I swayed.
“You just think and instead of thinking time as moving forward, you make it move backward for you.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, actually, it’s more complicated than that—a kind of scientific experiment that my big brother Warwick invented. He put electrodes on my head and well, something happens that I can’t fully explain.”
“Oh, did you have a brother, Warwick too? Does your Warwick snort when he laughs?” I cupped my hand over my mouth and tittered.
The lady-girl raised her lace sleeve to her mouth and giggled. “Yes, he does.”
“You must be me.” Repressing the urge to gnaw my fingernails before my future-self, I clasped my hands together and looked in her eyes. “So, me, what’s going to happen to me?”
She avoided my gaze. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.
“That’s not fair! Why can’t I?” I grabbed at her, but she slipped through my fingers and drifted from me. “Plee-ease!”
“I can’t!”
I watched her move further away and shimmer in the sunlight.
“But why not? Please! Just a little bit.” I chased her and swiped at her. “Just a tincy-wincy-little bit. I won’t tell! Promise!”
“Alright, if you insist.” She floated above the greying plaster fence. “But I must be leaving soon.”
She faded, blending in with the oleander and honeysuckle bushes. I strained to see her. I attempted to touch her, but my hand passed through her.
The wind whistled through the bushes. “Have a good time with Jilly.”
“You didn’t tell me! You lied, me!” I cried.
I hunched over and plodded back towards Grandma’s house. Shouts and squeals from a yard on my left, caught the corner of my eye. A girl my age bounced on an old double-spring bed.
“Hello, my name’s Lee, what’s yours?”
“Hello, my name’s Jilly. Do you want to play on the trampoline with me?”
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
***
Dreaming of being transported to another world?
Time for some holiday reading?
Take a break and journey to another world, another time to
[This account is based on a true story, but the names of the people have been changed, to protect the not-so-innocent…yada, yada, yada…so truth be told, it’s fiction to entertain.]
Neighbours to Entertain
Gliding home in her Toyota, Mum waved at the children gathered in the street around the corner from her place. Karl, her younger teenage son scowled, ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Just being friendly, love.’
‘Stop being friendly. It’s embarrassing!’
‘Just changing the culture, you know, trying to make this community more friendly.’
‘We should just keep to ourselves,’ Karl muttered. He slouched in the passenger’s seat and pulled his hoody over his eyes.
‘Now, remember to let your brother, Phillip in, if he comes home before me,’ Mum said.
Karl mumbled a reply that Mum hoped resembled the affirmative in “Karl-ish”.
The mother dropped her sulking son home and tootled off to her hair appointment in a nearby shopping centre. The hairdresser was very chatty filling Mum in on all the latest gossip and then emptying her purse of cash. Mum didn’t trust credit cards; she always paid in cash. After shopping at the local supermarket, she loaded her environmentally-friendly cloth bags filled with groceries into the trunk of her car and sailed back home.
She pulled up the driveway, and observed Ned, who lived across the road, leaning against his fence and peering over at his neighbours. “Never trust a man in brown trousers,” her friend used to say when she spotted the man lurking in his garden. Ned was wearing the said trousers and a dirty white singlet, that day.
‘I wonder what he’s up to?’ Mum murmured as she dragged the groceries out of the trunk.
Shouting echoed across the road.
Mum placed her loads down, and then ducked behind the acacia bush. She watched through the lattice of leaves and listened. JP, the father of the young family next door to Ned, raged at a pot-bellied man.
Mum frowned. ‘Poor JP, still in his pyjamas. Hmm, he doesn’t look happy. Wonder what Potbelly did to wake him up?’
JP jabbed his finger at Potbelly. ‘Get out of my home!’ he yelled. ‘I’m a shift-worker! You’re disturbing my sleep!’
Potbelly edged backwards up the drive as JP drove him up there with his finger-jabbing.
JP’s daughter darted around Potbelly. She waved her arms around and pleaded, ‘Please! Listen Mister…’
‘Get inside!’ her father snapped. Then back to Potbelly. ‘What gives you the right to come knocking on my door—waking me up. Did I mention that? How dare you accuse…Rah! Rah! Rah!’
Three more children emerged from the shadows and joined the dance around Potbelly, squeaking their protests. The grown men, as if bulls, launched at each other, locked horns with words, and flailed arms on the edge of blows.
Mum darted to her carport door where she watched, willing their fists to cuff. She breathed out. ‘More exciting than television.’
One boy, maybe a friend of JP’s son, lifted a mobile phone to his ear. The men, angry eyes only for each other, ranted.
JP bellowed at his kids, pushing the children before him as he steered them into the house.
Mum sighed, and then crept around the back of her home, entering through the rear door. Pushing aside the living room curtain, she observed the continuing drama.
Mobile-boy’s mum rolled up in her little red Honda sedan. Voices now muted by the intervening glass, Potbelly, his face the colour of beetroot, railed at her. He pointed at the boy. Clutching his mobile, the boy ran the back of his hand over his eyes, and his shoulders shuddered. His mother raked her fingers through her dark curls. JP’s boy and girl stepped out of their home. They stood each side of “Mobile-boy”, placing their arms around him.
‘Mmm, this looks interesting,’ Mum said, and on the pretext of taking out the clothes-washing, slid out the back door. Instead of heading for the clothesline, she wandered down to the side gate and poked her head over it. ‘They can’t see me, but I can hear them,’ she whispered while catching glimpses of the action through the shifting apple tree branches in the breeze.
‘But we can’t find it!’ JP’s boy bawled.
‘We’re sorry, we didn’t mean it,’ JP’s daughter bowed before Potbelly whose elbows jutted out as he bore down on his victim.
Mum moved her head left and right. ‘Trust the bush to be in the way.’ She then scuttled around the backyard and out to the carport again. ‘Darn! What happened?’
Potbelly and Mobile-boy’s mum were shaking hands. Then he shook the hands of another parent, a man.
‘Must’ve turned up when I wasn’t looking’ Mum murmured before returning to the backyard. She disappeared into her home to continue on with her life and dinner.
Pot-belly’s voice boomed. Mum dashed back outside to her stake-out position behind carport door.
‘You see,’ Potbelly said to Ned who still leaned up against his neighbour’s fence, ‘I saw them by my car. Fiddling with the wheel. By the time I got there, to them, they had run off and my hubcap was gone. It’s a Porsche, ya know. I chased them and caught up with them here. I want my hubcap back!’
Mrs Mobile-boy-mum spoke but the wind caught her words and blew them away. She pointed at JP’s carport door. Then the children and Mrs Mobile-boy-mum rolled it up, revealing the way to JP’s backyard.
Ned eased himself off the fence and followed the procession into the backyard of interest.
‘I wonder if they found the hubcaps?’ Mum said.
‘Wha?’
Mum turned. Karl towered over her, his arms folded across his chest of black windcheater.
‘What’re you doing, Mum?’
‘Er, um…just looking for the…I thought I heard…there was a disturbance…just checking it out…’
Karl tossed his head and flicked the dark fringe from his face. ‘You’ve been spying again, haven’t you.’
Mum glanced across the road. Ned and Potbelly had resumed their station leaning against the fence and mumbling in low tones.
Karl’s brother, Phil, backpack loaded with university books, strolled up the driveway. He threw a look behind him. ‘What’s up with those two? What’s with the glares?’
All was calm, all was quiet for Karl who slept contentedly while his mum, dad and brother ventured down to some local hills spring festival. Karl smiled, pleased that his demand for his family to stay in their own little box, out of neighbours’ way, had been obeyed…And that he didn’t have to take any more drastic action.
‘Thank goodness nothing came of Mum’s spying,’ he said, smacking his lips. He patted the shiny hubcap under his bed, sighed and then drifted into dreamy entertainment of his childhood lost.
He was glad he’d been friendly to the neighbourhood kids the other day.
A Story where the past and present, and vast distances in space intersect…and Boris does what he always does…
Eastern Europe, 1848
Prussian War raged, and the Wends as a village, left their homeland, with plans to set sail for Australia. From the Eastern edge of Prussia, they journeyed on a barge destined for Hamburg’s port, where they hoped to catch a cheap fare in the cargo-hold of a ship destined for the Promised Great South Land.
These villagers, never made their Australian destination. No one ever noticed, nor missed them. The neighbouring villagers assumed they had arrived in the Great Southern Land, and considered them so far away, and too distant to maintain contact. In Adelaide, also, the city for which they headed, the inhabitants were blissfully unaware of their existence. Migrating Prussians had taken their place in the over-flowing cargo-hold and were sailing across the Atlantic to Australia.
On this barge, headed by a man, Boris Roach, the Wends sang hymns of praise to God for their liberation from religious persecution, and the war. They looked to the promise of prosperity and freedom to worship God according to the Word. Their hope that their children and their descendants may thrive in their faith in the Promised Land of South Australia.
A tale where the nineteenth century meets the twenty-first…
[How the war on Boris began…on a planet hundreds of light-years away, and hundreds of years ago. Warning, this over-sized alien cockroach is not for the faint-hearted. The story is best to be digested away from meals. This story contains violence, gore and cockroaches.]
Boris crept towards her. She hunched over, back draped with a tattered shawl, picking rotting peel from the over-flowing garbage tin. Boris eyed the bundle of hessian rags and wrinkled flesh. She’s useless. Who would want her? She’s way past child-bearing age. Surprised someone hasn’t eaten her already. Old females were a specialty on his world, his favourite—boiled. Although he must admit, he’d never pass up the offer of a baby, cooked fresh out of the womb. Boris wiped the acid dripping from his crusty lips and scuttled closer to his victim. With his probe he stung this brown heap in the round of her back and she melted into a pool of oil. Boris extended his hollow proboscis and sucked the puddle, all of her black fluid on the pavement.
Boris thrust forward his abdomen swelled with this snack and waddled past his fellow Bytrodes. They smiled at him and nodded. ‘Well, done!’ ‘Ridding the world of waste.’ ‘I wish I had your guts.’
Boris grinned and with his surround optical vision guarded his armoured back as they moved behind him. No fellow Bytrode can be trusted.
Then Boris burped, lifted the flaps in his spine and unfurled his wings. A potent gust of gas enabled him to lift into the air and ferry through the ruined structures, once ziggurats with lofty peaks that vanished into the clouds, now a pile of broken stones. On a mountain over-looking a river of septic waste, his palace gleamed gold and white; his reward built on the shells of his competitors and any other Bytrode that got in the way.
Flying spent the fuel that was the old woman, and hunger gnawed at his ribs. He spied a neighbour, Gavin basking on the roof of a satellite wreck close to the foamy shore. He plopped onto the carcass of yesterday’s breakfast and sidled up to Gavin’s shiny black back. The heat of the metal roof stung his many feet, so he stood on the tips of his pointy toes.
‘Do you want a little something to help you on your trip?’ Boris purred.
His fellow rotated his bald head. ‘Sure. What have you got?’
Boris reached into the pocket of his armour and pulled out a plastic bag of white powder. ‘Here, try some. It’s fresh and clean.’
‘Thanks.’ With whiskers twitching, Gavin positioned his snout over the bag and absorbed the contents.
‘There, that will make you happy.’ Boris chuckled. ‘And me.’
Boris drooled and waited as the goo that was Gavin fried on the metal in the searing afternoon sun. At the crisp and bubbly point, Boris reached underneath the wreck, and pulled out a plastic spatula. ‘Ah! Neighbour biscuit!’ His tentacles wriggled as he snapped off a piece and munched. ‘A fitting entrée to dessert and the object of my lust—Maggie. A perfect end to a delicious day.’
Boris climbed the mountain of victim waste his shell splayed as a force field to protect against the attack of scavengers. His belly bloated, and home too close to wing it, he lumbered up the hillside of rotting corpses to his castle, his numerous eyes like surveillance cameras scanning for any movement of the enemy pretending to be dead. A hiss. Boris froze, antennae vibrating. In the crimson rays of the setting sun, a shell rose defiant. Boris charged his weapon arm and fired a stream of fusion energy. Puff! Ash of foe added to the mountain.
Boris folded his weapon prong into his scales, and exhaling, curled into a ball of hard silicon, rolled the final leg of his journey home. At the titanium steel door, he unfurled his body and then tapped the musical security code, using four of his six legs. The door Bytrode-body thick with reinforced steel and telephone directories, creaked open.
‘Were you successful, my lust?’ Maggie projected her thoughts to Boris. Her shell glowed auburn, as she flicked her long scales and caressed Boris’ aura.
‘Yep,’ he said waddling past her, and then brushing against her waiting claws. He sailed to his throne, the recliner rocker, inherited from yesterday’s breakfast, and planted his thorax on the leather seat. While his peripheral vision traced his female’s scuttling steps to his side, he aimed his proboscis at the shag-pile rug and regurgitated the mashed contents of his stomach, decorating the cream shag with a lumpy pool of umber.
Boris burped. ‘Gavin.’
‘That’s nice, dear. Never did like him,’ Maggie said. She extended her trunk, groping and fusing with his. She dug her hooks into his scales.
Boris quivered as the fermented juice of last cycle’s enemy pumped into his gullet. ‘Ah! Tyrone! That was a good victim.’ Swelling with victory, power and the ether of Tyrone’s spent life-force, he thrust his favourite female onto the shagpile and Gavin goo, his thoughts and intent on more pleasurable pursuits than feasting.
‘Boris, dear…’ Maggie retracted her spikes and slid from under him.
Splat! Boris’ raw flesh grated on the shag fibres, while is face kissed the blow-fly flecked stew that was Gavin. He lifted his head and sucked in a fly-flavoured morsel. ‘What?’
Maggie’s antennae twitched. ‘We have a visitor.’
Boris straightened up and smoothed his scales. ‘Why didn’t you say something before?’ His abdomen purred with the delicious thought of food killed and prepared by his be-lusted.
‘I was overcome by the moment, I suppose.’ Maggie picked at the bugs in the shag-pile stew. ‘He’s an alien, from a far-away planet.’
‘Mmm! Even better!’ Boris rubbed his stomach. ‘I haven’t had an alien in ages. Where is he? In the kitchen boiling?’ He used his eyes to zoom his focus into the kitchen.
‘But, dear, the lust of my life,’ Maggie said, her voice warbling, ‘this alien is different. You can’t eat this one. I won’t let you.’
Boris’ scales bristled. ‘What? You can’t stop me! I eat everyone.’
A slug-like creature twice the size of Boris, who was big by Bytrodian standards, emerged from the hallway and filled the living room. Boris studied the biped from the antennae-free head that scaped the ceiling, to his massive extensions of legs that disgraced the rug.
‘Okay, I guess it would be a challenge,’ Boris said, ‘although I’d like to know how he got this far without being harmed. He’s got no shell.’
‘Insect spray,’ the biped conveyed while making sounds through one of the holes in his face. Then with one of two hands, he covered this pink face hole and made low pitched grunting noises.
Boris and Maggie stared at the alien, their eye whiskers twitching.
‘Oh, pardon me,’ the alien said through his thoughts and vibration of the airwaves. He extended a thick rope-like limb to Boris. ‘I’m Joshua, by the way. I’m from the planet Earth.’
Maggie clasped her middle legs together and shimmered with an orange hue. ‘Oh! How wonderful! We’ve never had someone from Earth for dinner before.’
‘So you mean you’ve changed your mind, my dear Maggie?’ Boris beamed red as he stroked Joshua’s jelly-like hand and sniffed his salty skin.
‘No!’ Maggie snapped. ‘Why do you have to kill and eat everyone, Boris?’
Joshua tore his hand from Boris’ claw. He rubbed the scratches and wiped scarlet ooze on his white robe.
‘I’m a Bytrode, that’s what I do,’ Boris said, splaying his wings and then prancing around the room. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t trod on a few shells.’
‘But I’ve been talking with Joshua and he’s shown me another way, a better way to live.’ Maggie scuttled over the rug and Gavin puddle to her mate. ‘If we could be friends, and stop destroying each other.’
Filing his external fangs Boris fixed his beady eyes on this over-sized amoeba. ‘Friends? And end up like Gavin here? What planet are you from?’
‘A better one than yours. Seems like this one’s messed up,’ the alien said as he pointed a stubby tentacle through the window at the wasteland of crumbling shells, and the screams of Bytrode souls in conflict.
Boris planted his six hands on his scaled sides, his limbs akimbo. ‘Well, if you don’t like it, you can go back to where you come from.’ He wished this creature would stay, just long enough for him to execute a plan to over-power him, chop him up, bag him and store him in the freezer.
‘But dear, we can learn from this Earth-being.’ Maggie licked Boris’ feet. ‘He’s from the other side of the galaxy. Surely that must count for something in getting ahead.’
Boris rolled his thousand mini eyes. ‘Very well, then. He can stay in the garage.’ He rubbed his abdomen, and in a part of his mind blocked from scrutiny, rearranged the shelf space to fit bags full of Joshua flesh; so much of it, keep them going for weeks. He purred in anticipation.
When the backyard was clear of interfering adults, Wally’s harassment of the girls, particularly Minna, intensified. It began with vicious name calling, progressed to pinching and poking, and then escalated into soda warfare. Wally collected an arsenal of soda bottles which had come courtesy of Dad’s Christmas present soda machine, and after shaking vigorously, he assaulted the girls with the sticky fluid that spewed forth. No matter where Minna and Holly ran to escape, there lurked Wally, and the spray of soda. Not even freshly laid eggs from the hen house collected by Holly, and catapulted so accurately at Wally, deterred him from his soda campaign. It only stopped when the soda ran out. Grandma was not amused. ‘Them was good eggs,’ she lamented. She didn’t care about the soda.
Then came the stoning with pebbles from Grandma’s driveway. Wally rounded up the troops, all male, and barely pubescent. They scraped up the gravel by the tee-shirt full and set about pelting their female victims with the stones. The war of the Thumms had commenced; boys against girls. Holly and Minna cowered behind the corrugated iron bins and used the lids as shields. Grandma’s garbage was no match for gravel.
As the girls weathered another stone shower in the warmth of the Christmas Day twilight, Holly looked over at Minna. ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’ Holly had an uncanny knack for reading thoughts, especially Minna’s.
‘Yep, I think you are, Holly,’ Minna replied, smirking.
‘Well, then, what are we waiting for. Let’s dack him!’
‘Good thinking, Holly. There’s just the technical details to work out. Right?’ Minna ducked as a hail of pellets descended on them. ‘So how?’
‘Well, we could…’ Holly was full of brilliant ideas, but had trouble executing them.
‘I know, John, I’ll get my brother, John on our side. He’s an expert at dacking.’
‘Yes!’
Moving together, Holly and Minna held onto bin lids and side-stepped across the lawn to where John was fielding in another eternal game of French cricket. A spray of stones followed. Annoyed John hollered at the culprit, Wally, ‘Hey! Would you cut it out!’
‘Do you want revenge, John?’ Minna asked.
‘I’m playing cricket.’ John snapped.
Holly batted the tennis ball with her shield. ‘Won’t take long.’
‘Hey, I could have caught that.’ John sniffed and rubbed a pimple on the side of his nose.
‘See that over-sized baby, over there. That excuse of a boy called Wally?’ Minna pointed towards Wally as he gathered up more of the driveway in his tee-shirt. ‘Doesn’t he remind you of your worst enemy? Here’s your chance. You could dack him for us.’
‘Dack him yourself! I’m playing cricket.’ John replied while Holly batted another ball away with her shield. ‘Hey stop doing that!’
‘Only when you’ve dacked the Wally,’ Holly said. ‘I mean, look what he’s done to the drive way! And think about when you next mow Grandma’s lawn.’
John rolled his eyes. ‘Alright! But you owe me, cousin!’
Minna spotted Wally, again lurking, this time in the shadows, by the side of the house. She whispered to her big brother, ‘He’s just behind you, John.’
As Wally raised his hand to hurl stones on their unprotected bodies, John swung around and with one graceful and swift movement, drew Wally’s trousers, ants pants underpants revealed. Simultaneously in that split second, a flash lit up and interrupted the cricket match.
‘Yes! Good one!’ Minna congratulated John on his skill.
‘Thanks boys, that will make an excellent photo.’ Aunt Sophie announced, oblivious to the R-rated nature of her snap.
The seven sat around the dining table in silence. The roast steamed in the centre. Candles either side guarded the meal. Thunder rumbled over the hills and mountains. Lightning flashed.
Boris nursed his ray-gun hand and then he placed it beside his knife; a reminder in case any member of the group chose not to cooperate, Joseph assumed.
‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,’ Boris purred. ‘Thank you, Herr and Frau Biar, for inviting me. I do apologise for not being at the service this morning. I had a little business to take care of.’ With an evil twinkle in his eye, he glanced at Amie. ‘How was the service?’
Amie gulped.
‘Boring,’ Friedrich said in a sing-song voice.
Frau Biar and Herr Biar tightened their mouths. They frowned at Friedrich and shook their heads.
Wilma piped up. ‘Joseph and Amie are in love.’
‘I know,’ Boris looked at Herr Biar. ‘Well, aren’t you going to do the honours? Cut up the chicken. I’m sure you’re all dying for the roast.’
A black bug crawled out of the chook’s orifice. Everyone watched as it meandered across the tablecloth.
Boris drummed the table. ‘Come on! I’m hungry!’
Herr Biar sighed. He sharpened his knife and sliced off some chicken breast.
‘No! No! A proper cut! Cut the chicken open!’ Boris rose and stood over Herr Biar.
Herr Biar jabbed the knife in the centre and flayed the roast.
Cockroaches teamed from the cavity and over the plates, cutlery and vegetables.
Joseph flicked them as they sauntered over his plate. Amie shook them off her dress.
‘Come on! Cut the meat up Biar!’ Boris raised his voice. ‘We want to eat.’
Herr Biar served portions onto the plates. Boris helped. He scooped up the black stuffing and slopped a spoonful on every plate. The stuffing reeked of a rancid stench that filled the room.
‘Now, the vegetables,’ Boris said. ‘Frau serve the vegetables. We must have our vegetables.’
Frau Biar lifted with fork and knife, the roast potatoes garnished with cockroach entrails and plopped them on the plates. Then she added the steamed peas and carrots mixed with bugs.
Six stunned people studied their portions of festering food, not daring to touch it. Boris presided over the group. He grinned from ear to ear, imitating the Cheshire cat from “Alice in Wonderland”, as he poured lumpy gravy over the chicken on each plate.
‘Go on, eat up,’ he urged. ‘Oh, and by the way, Amie and Joseph, I have your families—just where I want them.’
Joseph tracked a couple of roaches tumbling in the gravy.
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