Untitled (Part 3)

When our words are used up Rosh doesn't waste any more time and she starts to tick.


I always like to spend a little bit of extra time with our words. I don't know if Rosh is less interested or more hungry. She has manifested her zolk while I am still rolling our words around inside my head. I only start ticking when I am satisfied that I have placed our words safely in a place in my head where I know I can retrieve them later. We all learn to do this in different ways. I don't know how Rosh does it but I have a small drawer in my head where I store all my words. A drawer that only I can open because only I have the key.

                    ~


 After noonfest I go straight back to the Helmet Zone where Ink is waiting for me. It's like she has been there all the time and she never left but of course she has just arrived back before me. I wonder what her nine words were and whether she has a drawer like me to put them in. Maybe I will ask her tomorrow but tomorrow is Wombday and Wombday is a three word day. You can't ask a decent question with three words and anyway questions are frowned upon. Nobody likes being asked a question because being asked a question means that you are being forced to waste your words on answering their question instead of coming up with your own words.

I think I think to much and that is why I don't appreciate helmet as much as I should. It's like my thoughts are at war with the screeches, the bleeps and the blips.

 

Untitled (Part 2)

THEY ASSURE US that it sticks. Everything sticks and it will all ultimately be for our benefit.


Ink is listening intensely. She gets it and I don't. For me it's an alphabet that consists of beeps and screeches. Occasionally a word jumps out at me. Hitler or Tombstone or Ravioli. If I can string two or three words together I consider it a victory. I don't get many victories.

                    ~


Because it's Sourday it's a nine word day and I spent most of Double Helmet thinking of the words I would choose. Ink is my Helmet partner but I save my words for Rosh. We sit together at noonfest every day except on Exposure Day. Everything changes on Exposure Day.

Rosh wears pirkle and has no hair. Because she wears pirkle she doesn't have to do helmet but has things pumped into her instead. She has told me that it makes her sick and that's why she has no hair. I'm glad I wear white because that's one thing that sounds worse than double helmet.


You can space out your words or you can let them all out at the same time. Me and Rosh have tried it both ways but today I chose to let mine all out in a row.


' I dream of outside and it smells of toilet.'


She looked impressed but she always looks half way between impressed and confused. It's a pirkle thing. They do strange things to their faces every morning and it makes their eyebrows look funny.
I could see that she was thinking about her own nine words whilst digesting mine. We all do that. Words are so sparse, hearing them is a bit like eating. It's a small meal we all look forward to.


'Mine are always about escape and it's very exciting.'


We are always careful not to repeat each others words because it seems like a waste, so the word 'and' sits in between us like an awkward and curled up third person. But it's done now and you can never take back any of your words. I can tell by her face that she is also regretting using the word 'very.' Words like that are unnecessary.  Somebody called Nancy once said that 'A man is not very tired, he is exhausted.' That's one of the things I've actually learned from helmet. That's how helmet works sometimes. You don't think you are learning anything but actually you are learning a lot you just don't use your knowledge until you need it.




(C) Ally Atherton

Untitled (Part 1)

SOMETIMES WHEN I'M not ticking I go hungry.



I sit in my capsule and nothing will happen. The Zolk doesn't appear no matter how hard I try to concentrate. On a good day I will get enough to keep me going until noonfest but on a bad day I will be lucky to get enough to feed a tinkle.


                      ~



It was Sourday and that meant double helmet. It was the thing I hated the most. Sitting there in my boothical with that thing on my head. It always gave me a headache even though I could always manifest myself a Yoogle afterwards. I don't know what we'd be without our Yoogles. They can cure anything, although I've never worked out what happens to a Yoogle that isn't feeling very well. Does it manifest it's own Yoogle?


I dread the journey to the Helmet Zone and have nightmares about walking the colourdoors that lead to it. The combination is etched into my mind. Yellow Yellow Red Red Red Yellow Blue Orange Pirkle Red Red. It is impossible to get lost. We know our way around the inside of our home like we know the colours of our garments because there is nothing else to do. We walk. We eliminate. We eat and we walk some more.



                     ~



Ink was sat in the boothical next to me as she always was. We listen in pairs and there are fifty pairs in each section of the Helmet Zone. Ink and me both wear white because we are connected by a birther.

To get the helmets working we have to tick. She is always faster at it than me but maybe that's because she doesn't hate Double Helmet as much as I do. She doesn't get headaches. She doesn't need a Yoogle.

When we are born we spend many years learning how to listen. Even at my age I still struggle to interpret everything and sometimes it still sounds like an incoherent collection of metallic screeches. I think that's why I get my headaches. Everybody is so much better at this than me. While they listen and learn all about the old times, I struggle to hear anything of any use to anybody.


                     ~

(C) Ally Atherton