Exposure Day ( Part 32 ) Banners

It's a funny feeling when you go to bed on Bath Day. You feel like a snake that has shed it's skin and grown itself a new one. I like to cover myself completely in my blanket and pretend that I'm still under the water. Because you do still feel like you are still there.



I had been holding Table's hand for so long I could still feel it in my own hand. Poor Table. I dread the day they have to open my legs but I have a couple of years to go. I am still only a childer. You have to be a middler for them to start doing all that. I am quite happy being a childer. I'd be happy to stop this way forever, whatever forever is. There is nothing after being a middler. You disappear. Just like the dead disappear.



Bag disappeared but I don't know what has happened to her. She is neither dead or a middler yet.  I can't get Exposure Day out of my head. Did it happen for the first time yesterday or have we always had one and will we get another next week? I curled myself up in a ball and thought about the banners with our names on. I thought about how many banners have my name on and how many people were making one right now with Dunstt written on it.







Dunstt is a funny little name but I guess we all have funny little names. Except Noah. His is a proper name and now he is gone and taken his name with him. I dread falling asleep again because it will be just me and the boat and the animals and they don't talk, they just make stupid noises. But at least they don't have to count their stupid little noises like we do.





(C) Ally Atherton


First Draft complete. Total Word Count 13083

Exposure Day ( Part 31 ) Underwater

'Remember yesterday?'





I used my last two words on Table. We always stick together on Bath Day. It's the funny thing about our world. We always like to stick to our routines and usually that means that we always sit next to the same person whether it is Bath Day or Double Helmet or Womb Day. Table wears green and has brown skin. The brown skins always stay together but on Bath Day she always sticks to me.



I bobbed my head under the water while I waited for her reply. I didn't know how many words she had left because she varies it every Bath Day and she doesn't always use any on me.



' Booth Day,' she replied.



Her words swam under the water to reach me. Words are good swimmers and they can hold their breath for as long as they want. Yesterday wasn't Booth Day. I know that but she doesn't. It seems I really am the only girl that remembers it.



'I had to open my legs. It was horrible.'



I was glad that I didn't have any words left because I wouldn't know what to say. But I was touched that she'd saved all her words for me. So I grabbed her hand and didn't let go.


It is safe underwater. Nobody can see you. There are no stammers underwater, at least I don't think so. It's nice to escape their eyes and that's why I don't mind Bath Day at all. And it is where my gift comes in very handy. I decided to spend most of the day underwater. Just me and Table's hand. Occasionally she joined me underwater but she isn't very good at it. The water goes up her nose and she always ends up coughing and spluttering. I couldn't stop thinking of Noah and how me and the animals would cope now that he was gone. I tried to force out another dream but I was dreamless and I had to content myself with thinking about him. Noah and the animals and our ill-mannered dove.







I wonder where the dove has gone to. Perhaps it's found another boat sailing on some other sea in somebody else's dream and not mine.

Exposure Day ( Part 30 ) Smell

Noah is dead.




I want to fold myself up like a napkin until I can deal with this.



The dove is selfish and hasn't come back. She has thrown all the words into the sea and they have drifted to the bottom. Unlike me they don't have to hold their breath but are now useless and soggy and all the letters have been merged into a squiggle. It's just me and the animals now and I haven't got a clue how to steer this thing. I don't know how it happened. Maybe I left the book closed for too long and he died of starvation or some tropical dream disease. The animals are fine but they know what has happened and are in mourning. They haven't folded themselves up like me. But they didn't love Noah like I did. He was my life.


I think this boat is going to sink. I remember learning about a boat called the Titanic that sunk killing many people. I cannot remember how I learned it. It could have been in helmet or in the watching zone. We learn about lots of things without knowing we are learning them. It's how things work. But I know lots of people died and there weren't enough life boats. I think I am going to need a life boat for me and all the animals. We'll have tom leave Noah behind or I may have to throw him overboard because I can't leave him on board. He will start to smell and I don't want to remember him as a bad smell. maybe when I wake up he will disappear from this book, this dream, whatever it is.

Exposure Day ( Part 29 ) Remembrance

I know now what the crackle gave me. The gift of remembrance. I remember yesterday. Exposure day. And nobody else does.


We talked and we walked and we shared our gifts. I told them about the reapers and Bag told us that she could see everything ten seconds before it happens. I wonder if she saw it coming. Her exit. her disappearance. Being chosen.





Everything was back to normal. Everything except Bag. She was gone and Rosh didn't even know who she was. I don't think anybody knows who she is. She's been erased. All memory of exposure day has been erased. I am beginning to think that there have been other exposure days before the one yesterday and I have forgotten them.


I lay in the big tub and disappeared under the water. It's a circular tub in a circular room. We wash and we spend all day washing. I don't know why they think we have to spend all day in the tub. We wash and we go all wrinkly. The reapers don't like the water. They sit behind us so that they don't get wet. It's the first time I have seen them totally removed and I wonder if they remember yesterday at all or if they even care. They don't seem to care about anything. They are just waiting to perform their duty. I wonder if they know when it will happen and that scares me. The fact that my (unseen) reaper could know exactly when I will die, the day, the hour, the very second of my demise. It's a terrifying thought. And it makes me realise that we all have a death day as well as birthday, we just don't know when it is. Today could be my death day and we I don't know it. Every year my death day comes and goes without my knowledge and so does all of our death days.




I stayed under the water for thirty minutes and nobody even noticed my amazing gift. I could have drowned and they wouldn't have noticed. I lay under the water and thought about Noah and the boat and all the animals living underneath. And how they are exactly like the pages of a book. And just like a book they disappear when you close it or turn the corner of the page. Everybody in the book freezes and waits until you start to read it again. This makes me sad because Noah and all the animals are frozen. They are trapped in my book and I have to go to sleep again to get them moving. They are basically dead.

And I think about Ink and how she is probably walking the colourdors right now instead of being here with all of us. I wonder if she is lost like we were yesterday and I wonder if she even knows about the door. The door that we went through. The door that me and Bag went through but I came back through alone. At least that's how I think it happened.

Exposure Day ( Part 28 ) Bath Day Again

The bells rang out like they do every morning and I opened one eye and peeped.



My capsule was back to normal and the stammer above my bed had the words Bath Day written in large letters. I could hear the sound of girls walking single file along the colourdors and Rosh knocked twice on my door like she always does.


She had a big grin on her face because she loves Bath Day. I have never really understood her fascination with a day in which we spend cleaning ourselves but it's everyone to their own.



Then I remembered. I remembered everything that happened but I don't remember how I got back into my capsule. Or anything that happened since they took Bag away.


'Is bag okay?'


Only three words. I still had seven words left because it was Bath Day.


Rosh looked at me as if I had turned into a porkine. She was frowning and it reminded me of of Noah and his beautiful eyebrows and of what we were doing before I was rudely interrupted by the sound of the bells.


'Bag?'


'Yes bag,' I said, 'Is she alright?'


Shit. Only two words left and I had only swung one leg out of my bed covers. Not a great start to the day. Rosh was still staring at me and again it reminded me of Noah and the way he looked when the dove dropped the word spunk in the sea.



'Who is Bag?



The words on the Stammer changed from Bath Day to Leave the Room.



I obeyed. We always have to obey. The bells stopped and I followed Rosh out of my capsule and into the colourdoors. They were working again and so we followed them to the Bath Zone.


Blue Blue Blue Pirkle Red Brown Yellow Red Brown Blue Blue Blue Pirkle.




I didn't waste any more words on Rosh. Words are precious and I only had two more left. It was Bath Day again for the second day in a row but yesterday was different. Yesterday was Exposure Day and I wasn't supposed to remember. We are supposed to forget but I didn't. I remembered everything that happened. The way we walked for hours in the colourless colourdors. Coin levitating. The dead girl.


The banners with our name on. Everything.

Exposure Day ( Part 27 ) Eyebrows

The dove has come back and is carrying expletives.




It is misbehaving again. Noah keeps sending it away with all the words he hates but it keeps bringing them back. Twat and Fuck are hanging out of its beak and Cunt is stuck to one of it's claws. A little giggle escapes out of my mouth but I try to shove it back in before Noah notices.


'Go back.' he is saying in mindspeak. Because in my Noah dreams even the dove has the gift of mindspeak.

'Go back. Take them far away and don't return until you have got rid of every one of them.'



I like him when he is angry. He is even more handsome. I like what his eyebrows do. You would have to see it to understand.



The dove has gone again and has taken the bad words with him but some of them have fallen into the sea and he doesn't bother to pick them up. He is a lazy bird. Noah has noticed and shakes his head. He shakes his head as if it is going to make any difference. But it doesn't. The dove will come back again with the bad words and will be sent out again. I have had this dream before, it is a recurring dream and always goes the same wa.y.




I grab Noah's hand and we go down to our room in the belly of the boat where we will make love to the sound of hooves and chickens clucking and dogs howling. This dream always ends too soon.

Exposure Day ( Part 26 )

Everywhere I looked I saw faces.



Faces of different sizes and different colours. It was too much to take in because our faces are all the same colour, although some of us go red when we get flustered.


They were talking and shouting and banging their hands together so that they made a noise. I saw men too. Lots of them and some of them with hair on their faces like Noah. I tried my best to find him but I couldn't see him anywhere but then that would have been stupid because I dream him. He isn't real.


Bag was holding my hand so hard I thought that mine was going to break. It was light too. Much lighter than we are used to and a different kind of light. A big yellow ball was floating above us in a strange blue ceiling. I wanted to turn around and run back the way we had come and judging by Bag's face she wanted to do the same thing.


'Dunstt.'


I see her mouthing my name but I can't hear it's sound. The faces all around us are making too much sound and it drowns out my name.


'I can't hear you,' I said. But my words are blown away from me before I could hear them.



I turned around and saw Stick standing behind us. Her eyes looked liked they were on stalks and she was frozen.


Then I noticed the banners that the people were holding. Banners with all our names on. I saw Coin and Ink and Mentha and other names that recognised and others that I didn't. Somebody was holding up a life sized picture of Bag but I don't think Bag saw it. She was shaking and holding her face in her hands. Somebody shouted my name and he had hair on his face like Noah. then others started to to shout my name and Bag's.

We were stood on a round piece of floor surrounded by all the people who we didn't know.



'It's Friday and that means it's Exposure day.'


The voice was louder than anything I had ever heard. It was louder than the warning bells.


'All week you have been voting for the person that you want to leave the house.'


I looked around but couldn't find the source of this voice. It was as if it was coming out of the air all around us. My legs were wobbly and I realised I was shaking as much as bag and it might have been me who was squeezing her hand rather than the other way round.


Everybody started to shout our names. My name and Bag's name. They became one word mixed together just like what happens sometimes on Booth Day when our names get mixed up on the doors.
I have never seen so many people. They all looked as if they were joined together like a chain of paper people.



'Bag.'


Her name was spat out like a pip and everybody started to cheer and to bang their hands together harder. They were smiling and calling out her name. Then somebody came from the faces and grabbed Bag and took her away. It was all too much. I was getting a headache and would need to manifest a Yoogle. I tried to  find  Bag again but she had dissolved into the sea of faces. Now I was alone on the floor. A shaking wreck of a person. I turned round to find the door and to look for Stick but something hard landed on my head and everything went dark.

Exposure Day ( Part 25 ) Forbidden

A girl called Stick found a door. It was an out of bounds door and she walked through it.




I saw it happen and me and bag were the only witnesses. Stick wore green and greens are always on their own. I don't think I've ever heard one of them speak and if they do they probably use their words on themselves. My heart sounded as loud as a church bell inside my rib cage. I wouldn't have been surprised if Bag had heard it too. We stood facing the big open door. Me with my bell and Bag like a mouse.


'So are we going to follow her or what?'


'We have to,' I replied. I glanced up at the stammies, half expecting to see their scowls. But it was just a blank screen. Nobody was looking down at us.


'It doesn't feel right,' she said. I knew how she felt because I felt the same way. It has been drummed into us from our birthing that it is strictly forbidden to go anywhere near them. Just like it's forbidden to use more words than we are permitted. There are lots of things that are forbidden. It's all we know.


I was waiting for the girl called Stick to return. To be tossed back through the doorway like a sack of potatoes. But we waited and nothing happened. We were in a dead end colourdor. It wasn't the first dead end that we had encountered but it was the only one that had a door at the end.


'Come on,' I said, talking as much to myself as anybody else. 'Come on.'



She held my hand like Mentha does on Wombday. It felt like I was holding hands with a small animal and not a girl at all. But maybe I felt like an animal too. Maybe we all did on this strange and upside down day. I closed my eyes as we walked through. I must admit that part of me was hoping that we would walk back into our normal world. A world where we only have so many words to use at once. A world where we feel like humans and not rabbits and porkines.




I think I heard Bag squeak and I think I squeaked too. Just a little bit.

Exposure Day ( Part 24 ) Questions

Her name was Much or her name was Muse. It was one of the two or neither.




We were passing information about like a game of Chinese Whispers. The word on the street was that somebody had found the Helmet Zone and it had been destroyed. While other girls were saying that the Helmet Zone had been taken over by a small group of disgruntled Crackles who were unhappy about the day's events.


I wasn't prepared to believe anything because all I was seeing were walls. Bare walls. Colourless walls. I had lost the others and I only had Bag for company. For some reason she had decided to attach herself to me at the hip.


'So what's mine doing?'


'He's asleep,' I said.



Most of them were asleep. I have come to the conclusion that they spend most of their time sleeping. It's their favourite pastime.


'How is it attached?'


'It isn't really attached by anything,' I said, 'they are just there.'



'What does he look like?'


'Ugly.' I said.



'In what way?'



This is how we went as we continued to search for something. A way out or a door or a tutt. She would ask me a question and I would answer in the best way that I could. I didn't mind. It was kind of reassuring to have somebody to talk to and it was taking my mind off my need to empty my bladder. It was burning now and it felt like my bladder was about to explode.


I tried to manifest a tutt but nothing was happening. I asked bag to try but she didn't have any luck either. At the this rate I would just have to crouch down when nobody was looking but judging by the smells emanating from the colourdors I wouldn't be the first one to do it.


' How do they do it?'


'What?'


'How do they do it?' she said. 'Do they strangle us?'



To be honest I don't know but I don't think Rhyme or the tall girl had been strangled. I told her that I didn't know. I don't really see how they do it. the tall girl was pinned to the wall and then she died. Much or Muse or whatever her name was.



'Oh.'



Bag said that she thought all the rooms had been removed at the same time as the Stammies. And that all we were left with was the colourdors. I told he that she could be right but I hoped not or else we could be stuck here forever. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was. I wanted that more than anything. I didn't want my words anymore. I wanted Bath Day back. I wanted a long soak and a scrub with all the other girls and I wanted to do it with my seven words and nothing else.




I told Bag to walk ahead of me when we came to another turn in the colourdoors. I crouched and hoped that nobody would come walking in the opposite direction.

Untitled ( Part 23 ) Look At the Dead Girl.

Coin floated down to the floor and I helped her up.



'I found a crackle and it gave me a star,' I said.


'What did you get?' she said.



I told her that I didn't know that but that some of the girls think it may have been a dud. I have never heard of dud crackles before and if there were such a thing I'm sure I would have done.


'Have you seen the stammies?' she said.



We all looked up and they were still switched off. I nearly told her that I miss them in a strange little way but I didn't think they would understand.

'We've been walking for hours but we can't find anything,' I said.


'Same here,' said Coin, 'but I've been levitating for a while to try and calm myself down.'


According to Coin it's easier to tick when everything is turned off so I tried it and manifested a glass of Layla juice. She was right so I manifested a cheese and onion sandwich. At least some things were looking up.


'We can't give up,' said Ink, 'we have to keep looking for a way out. We need to find the doors.'


She meant the 'Out of Bounds' doors. We all knew that and thought that at the same time I was sure of it. But the only problem was we were struggling to find any doors. We couldn't even find a door leading to a tutt and I was getting pretty desperate to use one.


Another crackle, this time a very angry red one, cam flying towards us. We all ducked out if the way instead of trying to catch it and we heard it crashing against a wall further along before it disappeared.


'They don't know what to do with themselves,' said Coin.


'They shouldn't be here at all,' said Ink.




Of course she was right. Ink was always right. I feel like she's always a step ahead of all of us in the thinking department. But she is that little bit older and almost ready for having her legs opened in the birthing zone. If we ever get to see the birthing zone again. I had a big feeling that everything had changed forever and that our lives were about to move into a new direction.



Bag screamed. And I followed her gaze and saw a tall girl being pinned to the wall by her reaper. She was taller and older than all of us but I didn't know her name. It was all over too quickly and she fell to the ground in a heap.


At first I thought that Bag had seen the reaper as well but them I remembered that she can see everything ten seconds before it happens. A ridiculous gift. What can you do in ten seconds? It was almost ridiculous as mine. I looked around and all the other reapers were grunting like Figs. I snapped.


'Why don't you all shut up?'


They continued to grunt and a few of them mumbled things that sounded like they were trying to say sorry but they couldn't quite spit the word out. It seemed that not all reapers were as fluent in human speak as the ones that had visited me that night.


That's when I realised that all the girls were looking at me. Like I had just done a crap on the floor.



'Who are you talking to?' said Ink.


'What?' I replied.



'Who are you telling to shut up?'


'Them,' I said. 'The reapers.'




Everybody was looking at me instead of looking at the tall girl who was laying with her head face down on the floor. I wanted to tell them all to turn around. To look at the dead girl, not me.




Look at the dead girl. See, she's dead. Isn't that more interesting than me?



'We have to find the doors,' said Rosh. She sounded like a mouse. It was more of a squeak than anything.


'We have to find the doors. The out of bounds doors,' she said.






I needed the tutt. Badly. It was starting to hurt. Either we found one or I was going to piss myself.

Untitled ( Part 22 ) Giving up.

I found a crackle and it did nothing.




When we first saw it lying in the middle of the crossroads it became a race. We all ran forward and leaped onto it at the same time. I managed to grab hold of it at the same time as I cracked my head against Rosh's head. She came out worse but I ultimately got the crackle.

I held out my hands and it gave me a star and then it popped. I have never heard of a crackle giving anybody a star before so I don't know if I was highly honoured or unfortunate. You always get a feeling as soon as you hold the gift to your head but this time I got nothing.Zilch.


I could feel the girls' eyes digging a hole into the back of my head. Jealous eyes no doubt. They were digging a hole big enough to burst through to the other side of my face.


'So what have you got?' asked Ink.

'Nothing yet.'


'Nothing? But how does it feel?'



I couldn't believe we were talking openly about things like crackles. You never talk about them and under normal circumstances you never told anybody about your gifts. But these weren't normal circumstances. everything had turned off. We were on our own.


'I can't feel anything,' I said.


I desperately wanted it to be mindspeak even though it didn't seem relevant any more seeing as we could all talk freely. Or maybe invisibility. That is another one I have fantasized about. I closed my eyes and tried to listen but I couldn't hear anything at all.


'Maybe it was dud,' said Bag.


'Come on,' said Rosh, 'let's keep on looking.'



I was sick of looking. We had been looking for hours and we couldn't find anything. Just wall upon wall, colourdor upon colourdor. I kept looking up to see if the stammies had come back on but they were still blank. We were still on our own.


Even though we all hate the stammies I felt a distinct sense of unease at their absence. When you've spent your whole life being watched from sunfest to moonfest, even when you're on the tutt, you can't help but feel lost without them. We were all slowing down and more and more of the girls we passed in the colourdors were sitting down or crouching in a corner. There is only so long you can walk around in circles before you start to lose the will to live.



We found Coin levitating near the ceiling and she hardly acknowledged us. She just raised her eyebrows and looked straight ahead. She looked to all of us as if she had given up. But I had strange feeling that we all looked like that because we were beginning to give up.

Untitled ( Part 21 ) Double Lucky Bitch.

'Sometimes I can be in five places at once.'



I wanted to swap my gift for Rosh's. What was the point in seeing reapers anyway? It didn't have any practical purpose. It wasn't as if I could have a quiet word in their ear and talk them out of doing what they are about to do. My gift was pointless. As pointless as a teacup with a hole in the bottom.


We were just walking around aimlessly. We all looked the same. It was as if somebody had come along and transplanted the same morose face on the front of our heads. Some of us were bent forward and some of us were as rigid as table legs. One or two were stood in the middle of the colourdoors like statues, just taking up space as if they were waiting for somebody to come along and put them somewhere.


And we couldn't find anything. It was as if somebody had painted out all the doors. We couldn't find the Helmet Sphere or the Birthing Sphere or the Watch Sphere or the Red Room. Nothing. It was one big long twisty colourdor without an end.


' I have three extra words a day.' said Ink.


Her words forced us all to stop at the same time.


'Everyday I can have three extra words to use whenever I want. But I have to use them all for myself.'


So no mindspeak then?


'Lucky bitch,' said Bag. I couldn't have put it better myself. I can't explain how important words are to us. We have so few to play about with that we spend most of our days thinking about how we will use them. So to have three extra words would be incredible. Much more incredible than seeing reapers or being able to stay underwater for hours on end. The more I thought about my gifts were bloody pathetic.


'I usually save them for moonfest and they help me to get to sleep. But the great thing is that I don't have to use all three in one day. I can save them up over a few days so that I can practically have a conversation in my capsule.'



Double lucky bitch


Listening to her revelation helped us to take our minds off the fact that we were lost. And we were lost. Helplessly lost. I don't think we could have found our way back to our capsules even if we spend all day trying.

Untitled ( Part 20 ) Could It Be Mindspeak?

'I can see what is going to happen in ten seconds before it happens.'


It was Bag. This was the first time I had heard her speak and she talked like the reaper with the infantile voice. I could hardly see her mouth move because her hair was in the way.


'It's not the most helpful gift in the world but it sometimes comes in handy if somebody is about to trip over or choke on a small piece of food.'


I wanted to tip her upside down like a salt seller and to scream at her to shut up.


'It's okay. Everything's stopped hasn't it? We can talk about it.'


I guessed that she was right and I was just about to tell her about the reapers when Rosh told us that she has been given the ability to travel without moving by using her mind instead of her legs.

That had us all thinking. It was a great one to have. Apparently she does travel along the colourdoors at night without leaving her bed.

'It's very comfortable,' she said.


I wanted to tell them about the reapers but it didn't feel right so instead I told them about my ability to hold my head under water for as long as I wanted to without drowning. But compared to mind travelling it sounded pathetic. And it only came in useful on Bath Day. And we were spending Bath Day walking around the colourless colourdors like headless porkines.


'Watch out,' said Bag. Ten seconds later a crackle came racing down the colourdor towards us but we all had time to duck out of the way. A crackle in broad daylight.


'This really can't be happening,' said Ink, whom we had all forgotten about. She was further along and hadn't been so lucky and had been knocked against the wall by the crackle.


'I did try to warn you,' said Bag.


'Watch out, ' I said, 'there may be others.'




We soon got completely lost. Without their colours the walls weren't very helpful. We didn't even know if we were walking in a straight line or going around in circles. Others were passing us and going in the opposite direction and looking as lost as us. Nobody was really talking to one another. We all seemed to be split up into our different groups. The reapers weren't helping either, they just clung onto their host's backs and half of them were asleep or pretending to be asleep. I thought about waking them up so that they could help us but then I would have to tell everybody about them, but it didn't feel like the right thing to do.

How exactly are you supposed to tell somebody that death is literally breathing down their back? For the moment I thought it was something that was best kept to myself. My not so amazing ability to breath under water would have to do. Besides Ink hadn't told us hers. What exactly could she do that she was not telling us. Could it be mindspeak? Surely not?

Untitled ( Part 19 ) More Than We Talked

I've never known the stammies to go out.


Ever since I was born to my birther they have watched over me, There's no escape from them. They are the same now as they were in the beginning. That line has been drummed into us from Day Zero.

So to look up and see a those little blanks screens was impossible to take in, It was too big to comprehend.


'The bastards have gone.'


It was Ink. She had joined me and Rosh in the now colourless colourdoors. Bag was also tagging along. It seemed that Rosh was collecting people but I didn't know what purpose she had in mind. Bag was a tiny blob of black hair. I have never spoken to her but sometimes we share a boothical in helmet when Ink isn't well. She is one of life's tagger-alongers. I don't know who she shares her words with or anything else about her.

All four of us were looking up at the empty stammies, expecting them to flash back to life at any moment. At any moment we would see their faces and we would hear the bells tolling.


'Where did they take her?' said Ink.

'Who?'


'Rhyme. When they die where do they go?'

'Dunno,' I said. I really didn't. Nobody does. None of us know anything, We live in our bubble and we don't ask any questions. Because we have nobody to ask them to and usually don't have enough words anyway.

Other girls were filing past, most of them looking as uncomfortable and dazed as we did. Others were running around like headless porkines. And all the time I was thinking Noah would know what to do. Noah would save us.


'Well lets' find out,' said Ink. 'Let's find out where they have taken her.'


We started to walk and we carried on walking and we walked more than we talked because we weren't used to our voices. We didn't want tp break them. But we were all thinking the same thing, I was sure of it. For once I really thought that mindspeak was possible and that all four of us shared a that same thought. I could almost hear it spoken out loud and I think they did too. Even Bag.



The doors. The doors may be open. The doors that belong to them and not us.

Untitled ( Part 18 ) Everything's Turned Off.

I wake up with hands around my neck and two eyes looking down at me.


'Dunstt.'


I think I'm still dreaming because we always wake up alone and I have never woke up with somebody's hands around my neck.


'Dunstt, come on, get up.'



It's Rosh and I am so angry I nearly fling her across the other side of my capsule. I have surprised myself. I didn't realise that I was getting so strong considering I am eating less than a pigeon.


'Sorry,' I said.


I helped her up off the floor and she sat don on the edge of my bed.


'What are you doing in here?'


Seven words. I had used seven words and I had only just opened my eyes.


'We have to go. All shits let loose.'


I stared at her in disbelief. She had used thirteen words already and it was Bath Day. Ten words only on Bath Day but she had used thirteen.


'What are you looking at me like that for silly. Get off your bed and come on. Now!'

Thirty One words. That was impossible.


'Thirty One Words?'

Now my words were all used up. Not a great start to the day.


'Dunstt, look at me and listen,' She said, 'They've all gone.'


I just shook my head because my words had gone and that's all I could think about doing.

'They've all gone. Everything's turned off. You can uses as many words as you want.'


I wanted to grab her by the neck and shake her until she started to make sense but by the time the thought had popped out of my head, she was leaving my capsule.


'Come on!'


I wanted to manifest my zolk. I was hungry and I was determined. but before I had time to do anything, Rosh was grabbing my arm and dragging me into the colourdoors.


'Stop it.'


Nine words. That was impossible.


'See,' she said, 'as many words as we want.'


It was only then that I noticed that her Reaper wasn't attached. He was already in the colourdoors waiting for her. He looked at me and I looked at him and he looked down at the ground. Awkward.


'Look at the colourdoors,' said Rosh.


The colourdoors weren't colourdoors at all anymore. They were grey. Miserable and dour.


'And that's not all,' she said. 'Look up at the stammies. They've all gone out. All of them.'



She was right. She was right about everything. The stammies were blank and faceless.

Untitled ( Part 17 ) Spoon Hands

I dream of Noah again.


We have gathered all the animals together as best as we can but they are restless and we can hear them kicking and rattling in their cages. They don't like being cooped up because they are used to being wild.

They are like us in their cages. Trapped and airless. But at least we don't make them do stupid things like helmet and exposure day and they don't have to count their words. We can hear them down in the belly of the boat. Their words are native and vulgar but I am jealous of the fact that they can let them out as often as they want.


Noah has tree hands in this dream. At first I was upset because I wanted them before him but then I realised that they are not very helpful and his trees are more like shrubs. He is just stood there looking at them with puppy eyes. He doesn't know what to do with them and I feel guilty because it's my fault. Everything is my fault because it's my dream and I made Noah and his tree hands. We are on top of the boat looking out. It's a bit like the roof we all had to sleep on after the riot. But it's just me and Noah now and we are looking out at a sea made out of short and stumpy words. The sea is too rough to be able to read many of them and they won't stay still for long enough. I spot a Bone and a Fish ( not a real one, just the word) and a Hello that is turned over in the corner like a page that has been read and bookmarked.


Me and Noah have mindspeak in our dreams. Though we still use our words sparingly because that is what I am used to and I don't want to make myself sick by using too many at once. He is saying the same thing over and over.



'Look at my hands.'

'Look at my hands.'



I have told him I am sorry and that next time it won't be like this and that maybe if I wake up and dream of him again they will be back to normal. He normally has lovely hands. Big fat, spoon hands that smell of the ocean.

Untitled ( Part 16 ) Tree Hands

In between the squiggles and the patterns I see a plane crashing into a building and soldiers marching and people kicking a ball about on a big piece of green.



I struggle to keep my eyes open. I try to manifest myself some Coga Juice to keep them open and to stop myself from drifting off to sleep. But it's no good. I am getting worse at ticking. If I carry on like this I am going to make myself sick. I am already feeling like a bag of bones. Eventually I manage an apple. I am sick to the death of the things. I don't know what it is with apples and why I only seem capable or manifesting them and nothing else at the moment.


I suck as much juice as I can out of it and watch a cartoon cat chasing a mouse. The mouse has landed in a goldfish bowl and is using a straw to breath. We get a close up of the cats eyes. The bowl make the eyes look like breasts.



The apple has gone and I have collected all the pips in my hands. There is no bin in the room. Just me and the small screen and a carpet. They don't believe in comfort. Everything is for their convenience and not ours. I stare at the screen and try to take it all in but it is more nonsense than content. I am more interested in rolling the pips in the palms of my hand. I imagine what would happen if they took root. I would have tree hands and maybe they would grow big enough so I could climb them out of here.

There are words taking up the entire screen now. They are flashing on and off. They hope that this will make the words stick inside our heads. Long complicated words like Effervescence and Conundrum as well as short stumpy words like Stick and Sludge and Piano. I decide that tonight I will try to manifest a piano. If I try for something big I may end up getting something more substantial than an apple. Maybe a sandwich or a bowl of nuts at least. I am beginning to hate apples so much that I may start a riot by throwing the next one I manifest at somebody in tomorrow's helmet. It's a long time since we had a riot and last time they made us all sleep on the roof as a punishment.

Untitled ( Part 15 ) Booth Day

I couldn't tick again, it was getting ridiculous now. I was empty all over.




It was Booth Day so I followed the yellow corridors all the way to the Watch Sphere. There was nobody to hold my hand because we have to go alone and we are allotted our own times. I don't like the Watch Sphere because it's claustrophobic. You have to go though a door into a door into a door into another door until you find the one with your name written on in chalk. They move the rooms around all the time so sometimes I can spend forever trying to find mine.


Sometimes they spell my name wrong or miss out a letter or mix my name up with somebody else's so my name isn't my own but an amalgamated name.  It must be because there are so many of us living here now and they must struggle to remember us.



The room is always dark but not as dark as my capsule at night. And it's a squeeze to get in. I'm not much bigger than the rooms we are given. In fact they are not really rooms at all but hutches. Hutches that you would put a small animal in, like a rabbit or a porkine.


I sat against the wall and waited for it to start. If I had to explain it to you, it's a bit like helmet but instead of listening to it you watch it instead. I tried to get as comfortable as I could in the space I was given but I can never get comfortable. I get cramp in my head as well as in my legs. I get so uncomfortable I always feel like I need somebody to put myself back together again when I've finished.



The screen is only small. Not much bigger than my head. So I get eye cramp as well.


Most of it makes no sense at all. It is just a lot of squiggles and spots and patterns that fade in and out. I occasionally spot something I recognise like a butterfly or an egg or a chimney. But most of it is unrecognisable. But they assure us that everything is real and everything that we see actually happened at one time or another and that it is why it's important for us to watch. It's how we know things. And that's why Booth day and helmet are so important. Nobody tells us anything apart from what we are given so we have to make the most of it.


To be honest I was just glad to be away from the Reapers. That is what they are called, I know that now. And we all have one, it's just that I'm the only one that can see them. I wish I didn't but I can't argue with what a Crackle give me. You have to get what you are given. I'd rather have something else like the power of invisibility or levitation or mindspeak but I see reapers instead.



I know what they are now as well. They wait. That is what they do. They live on our backs and spend every waking second of our lives waiting.


Waiting for us to come to the end of our journey. Waiting to take care of our final need. Death.

Untitled ( Part 14 ) Just Like Water.

I woke up and there were two of them at the end of my bed.





Once the lights go out at moonfest it's darker than dark. Light aren't allowed and it's too dark to even let your eyes adjust. But I saw them. I don't know how they managed to do it it but I could see them staring at me like I was an animal in a zoo.



'She has no words left but she can have some of mine.'



That one spoke like a child although he was the size of full-grown.


He was pointing at me.


How could he give me his words? You can't borrow words. It was impossible.



'She doesn't understand.' That one spoke in a high pitch. A non human voice.



They walked towards me and I tried my best to float inside my bed but I didn't go anywhere. I'm sure most of the other girls would be able to do it. They would probably be able to fly along the colourdoors on their beds if they wanted to. Maybe they already do.


Go away.


I was hoping they could mindspeak.


Please leave me alone.



'Here.'


The one with the child voice handed me something and at first I thought it was a crackle but it was a ball of light.

'Take it.'


I didn't have to take it. It took me. It dissolved in my hands and I could feel it climbing up by body and into the back of my throat.


Words. So it was true. You can borrow words.


'Dunstt.'


I didn't want to do it. I had used all my twelve words and it was still Moon Day.


'They are yours. You won't get into any trouble.'


I didn't want to use them. I wanted to scream them out from the back of my throat and out again into the middle of my capsule.


'Use them Dunstt.'



They were climbing onto my bed. All of them. I could feel their spindly, shadowy limbs on top of me and I couldn't hold it in any longer.



'Get away from me.'


'We won't hurt you,' said the child voice. 'We need you to understand what we are.'


'I don't want to understand, ' I said, 'I want you to get out.'


I had high pitched voice on one side of my and child voice on the other and they were moving their hands to the front of my face.


I still had words inside my throat. I could feel them. I don't know how but I could. But I had no way of counting them.


'Please.'


I felt their hands over my eyes and they were warm and wet like they weren't real hands at all but hands made of water. Just like water.


'Don't hurt me.'


Water. I could feel the water inside my head and I couldn't hold it in any longer.


I screamed. And I had never screamed before. We live in such a quiet place. A place made of whispers and small words. A place of short sentences and pauses.



I screamed like I had never done before and in doing so I forced them off me and they were gone when I opened my eyes. My capsule was dark again like it should be and I had their secret inside my head. It was sat in the back of my mind like an apple.


A secret that made me shiver in all the wrong places.



I knew them. I knew who they were. What they were.





Reapers.

Untitled ( Part 13 ) Ticking

I don't find ticking easy.



Some girls only have to think about something and it falls into their lap but I have to concentrate. That's why some days I go hungry and thirsty. Because we have no choice. We tick or we starve.


So that's why I try to put lots of effort into it on Moon Day. I don't like being hungry as much as I don't like double helmet. I'm thin enough and I don't want to get any thinner.


Coin was levitating and I was stuck to the floor trying to manifest an apple. It can take me hours to be able to manifest anything on a bad day and I have never even got as much as an inch off the ground. That's the difference between me and a lot of the others. Some of them can manifest apples in their sleep.



The problem is that I am always thinking about something else. I always have thoughts zooming through my mind. To tick you have to have a clear mind and mine is the opposite. I have a cluttered mind. Sometimes I think that all the other girls are blank. Blank like white walls. And that's why they are always levitating and moving things around and have full stomachs all the time. They are so far ahead of me I worry that one day they will develop their own secret language that only they can understand and that I will be left behind. A secret blinking code or one involving complicated but secretive hand gestures.


And I couldn't stop thinking about Rhyme. And how she was laying face down on the floor with one eye open and the other one closed.



My apple appeared and then disappeared and then appeared again. Coin was still floating up near the ceiling and had manifested a bluebird. She was rolling it around in her hands like it was a small ball and not a bird at all. I was half expecting it to turn into something else at any moment. A plant or a jug of water or a bowl of strawberries. But it remained a bird and my apple remained half there and half not there.


Her ghoul was hidden out of sight, somewhere behind her back. I couldn't even see any of it poking out. But I knew it was there, I could feel it. And I didn't like that feeling because it reminded me of the one that had got away and what he had said to me.


Nobody should be able to see us.



Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe something has gone wrong. Or maybe there's something wrong with me and I'm seeing something that isn't really there at all.

And there's nothing on anybody's back and never was to begin with.

Untitled ( Part 12 ) Death

One minute he was there and the next he disappeared.



It was chaos. Girls were running around screaming and using all their words up at once and soon there were no words left. Just a room full of silence with  a dead girl lying in the middle. But we could all feel it. One big invisible word was present in that room, sitting amongst us like a fat slug. Death.

At first I thought all the other ghouls had gone away with him but they were still there. Just hiding behind everyone's backs. None of them would look at me when I stared at them.



It was my first death. We are all young you see. Not one of us have reached our sixteenth year. And when we do we leave. Girls have come and gone but none of them come back and nobody ever talks about it. We haven't got enough words anyway even if we wanted to.


One of the older girls, Flint was her name, led us all out of the red room and moved us along. It didn't matter where we went as long as we weren't there. I wanted to scream out loud  It was him I saw him do it but I know I can't talk about them because the Crackle gave me the ability to see them and it's forbidden.

Coin grabbed my hand and led me down the colourdoors but some of them were still in the wrong order and we soon got lost. Being lost isn't funny because everywhere looks the same and I was starting to panic. So we decided to sit down in one of the alcoves to practice ticking. That's what we are supposed to do on Moon Day's so at least we were doing something normal instead of thinking about the dead girl.


Rhyme. That was her name and she was wore pirkle. She probably died because of all those things they pump into them. I'm glad I'm not a pirkle or like one of the older girls that have to open their legs on Wombdays. I'm glad I'm just me.

Dunstt. The girl with the uncontrollable hair and the spot on the back of her neck.


The girl who witnessed a murder.

Untitled ( Part 11 ) Wasted Words

WHEN WE WENT into the red room and it was busier than I had ever seen it in my life.


It took me a while to realise why but then I remembered all the capsules were in the process of being rebuilt and everybody also had a ghoul attached now. So for everybody else it probably didn't look that busy.


'Dunstt!'


I turned around at the sound of my name. A little startled. We didn't really do the whole name thing, partly because we didn't need to and we didn't want to waste our words on trivialities.

It was Coin. She wears grey and I spend time with her on Exposure Day. I wanted to say Hi but I also wanted to keep my twelve words to use all at once. But she and some of the other girls never did. They were careless and spat them out a tiny piece at a time.

'Hi.'

Two words wasted. Foolish girl. I nodded and sat down next to her. The red room is only tiny but it's where we all like to hang out when we all want to be together. It's a round room and we all sit along the edge in a circle.


'Can't go to our rooms.'


She only had five words left now. I shook my head. Sometimes I think that's all we do. We nod and shake our heads like sheep. Stupid stupid girl. And then I started to worry about what would happen if Coin had the gift of mindspeak and she could hear what I was thinking about her. But then I stopped thinking like that because mindspeak is something I've made up so why would anybody have it in the first place?

Everybody had a ghoul and most of them seemed to be sleeping except for one which did something I wasn't expecting. It slipped off somebody's back and stood in the middle of the circle. And then it looked at me. Eyeball to eyeball. And it was like we were both in our own party that nobody else had been invited to.

It looked uncertain, as if it was waiting for my permission to make the next move.


'You can see me.'


Four words. I froze. I wanted to answer him back but I wasn't going to waste my words on a ghoul, I was saving them for my friends. I nodded.

He was agitated. I think he was more nervous than me at this sudden turn of events.


'Nobody.'


I still refused to return my words.


'Nobody should be able to see us. How can you do it?'


And then they fell out. Like spittle. They fell out before I could grab hold of them to put them back.


'A crackle gave it to me. It's a gift I don't want.'


Twelve words. All gone in one go. I could have cried.




A few seconds later she was dead. The girl that he came from. She was dead because he killed her.

Untitled (Part 10) Temporary Blocks

When I woke up it was Moon Day and somebody had taken all the walls down and replaced them with temporary blocks. They do that occasionally and by the time you get back again everything is back where it should be.


I don't know why they do it and I wished they would at least put thing back a little differently so we can all have a change. Nothing ever changes and that's why you have to make the most of the small things, like holding hands and words and yolk. For some reason I find it easier to tick when the walls are down and I managed to manifest everything that I wanted. Layla Juice and puff berries and slat bread. I was pretty stuffed and it was a nice change to walk along the colourdoors full to bursting.

Moon Day's are my favourite days because you can pretty much do what you want as long as you practice your ticking. And you even get twelve words as long as you don't talk while you are ticking or tick while you are eating. I usually spend the day visiting Ink and Roth and both of them come to mine later on in the day. But today we had no capsules to go to so we had to go elsewhere until they put everything back where it should be.


Even some of the colourdoors had been taken down so we spent most of sunfest trying to get from one place to another without crossing into any of the forbidden zones. And that's the last thing we wanted to do because we didn't want to lose any of our words when we had twelve to ourselves and we wanted to use them.

Untitled (Part 8 ) Dreams

When I'm in my capsule it's just me and the world is locked out.


Just me and the hum. It drives Ink crazy. She told me once. I think she received a gift from a crackle that makes everything louder but I'm just guessing. Because it's not that bad, you get used to it. It's the walls talking.

I don't know how she can enjoy helmet so much and get so wound up over the hum. If anything it helps me to sleep. It's there all the time but is sounds louder at night when there's nobody else to take your mind off it.


Sometimes I cup my hands to the wall and listen to it to see if it speaks. But it doesn't. It's just a hum and they don't really talk. That's just something we say.


At night I like to talk to myself. There are no rules about that or if there are, nobody has bothered to tell me. Most nights I talk myself to sleep or give up when I run out of words to tell myself. We are not used to talking so it's not easy even holding a conversation with yourself.

And then there are dreams. I think I have more dreams than everyone else does. Once I dreamed that we all had unlimited words and we all ended up speaking so much it became unbearable and nobody could hear themselves speaking. It was a total waste of time in the end and because we all could talk as much as we wanted to our words lost their power. We didn't enjoy them or appreciate them anymore and in the end we stopped talking and decided to limit ourselves again.

And then there's Noah. I dream about him all the time. Noah and ship and the flood. It's because of helmet. It put's all these things into our heads. Some of the things stick and we just know them but other things stay in the background like the hum. And then they turn up in our dreams. Weird things like Noah and the two by two animals and Hitler and pockypines, the little creatures made of pins.

Untitled ( Part 7 ) Ghouls

I have decided to call them Ghouls.



I can't think of a better way to describe how they look and how they make me feel but they make me feel like somebody is tying a knot in my stomach the way you would tie up a pair of shoe laces.


I have never spoken my Wombday words in front of anybody else before but I had to. She was there and her ghoul was there at the same time and I had no choice but to let him become part of our secret conversation. Of course it was all deeply forbidden. Nobody is allowed to speak their words to more than one other person. And on Wombday it's Mentha. It's always Mentha because she holds my hand and doesn't let go of it.


' You feel anything?'


I felt guilty straight away for asking a question. You never ask a question because then they are forced to waste their three words on answering your question instead of thinking up their own words. I could feel myself going red and I tried to apologise inside my head, in the hope that she would hear me. In the hope that a Crackle really had given her the gift of mindspeak.


I really was pulling at straws though and by the look on her ghouls face he knew what I was thinking.


'I feel nothing.'



I felt bad all the way back down the colourdoors so I gripped her hand tighter than I have ever done before in the hope that it would be a kind of apology. I felt terrible and I would have to wait another week so that she could say her next three words to me.


Words are precious. We don't have much else. Except on Exposure Day but I would feel bad all week for what I said.


I'm sorry 


I screamed in my head.


I'm sorry.


If  only she had the gift. If only she could hear me and we would be ok the two of us until next week. But he could hear me. I was sure of it. Her ghoul. I could see it in his eyes, his dark eyes. Eyes that looked through me as if he was looking at somebody behind me and not me.


But maybe he was. Maybe I had my own on my back and I just couldn't see it or wasn't supposed to.

Untitled ( Part 6 ) MindSpeak

I was still holding hands with Mentha as we walked around the birthing Zone.


It's amazing how important touch is when you can't talk. It almost becomes a second kind of speech. We have done this so many times I am beginning to think that we can read each others minds. I tell her things all the time in our own mindspeak but she never gives me an inclination that she has heard me.

I told her about my dream and how Noah was building a ship so that we could all escape, two by two and how we were collecting adjectives instead of wood or whatever ships are made out of. I wonder how many times she has been visited by a crackle and whether she gets triangles or circles or squares. Sometimes I think she can hear me when I talk to her and that maybe that's the gift she has been given. The gift to hear what other people are thinking. When I consider this possibility I try to shout louder inside my head until I end up giving myself a headache and needing to manifest another Yoogle.


We are poked an prodded. We have things removed and taken from us. Blood, skin, urine and anything else they can think of. It's not good. But it is slightly less annoying than Triple Helmet. At least we are not forced to sit in the same position for hours. At least we can walk and think for ourselves without the constant beeping and screeching from the head sets. I still saw the monsters but I tried my best to filter them out and the constant prodding and poking helped with that. But they were getting clearer. More like us. People like us. Not monsters but people that shouldn't have been there. People attached to people.

But of course I couldn't tell anybody about them. It was forbidden. You couldn't talk about the Crackles and their night time visits and about the gifts they bring. Or else something more terrible than words would happen. Everybody knew that. I don't know how we know it but we just do. Maybe we are born with that knowledge or maybe we learn it in helmet or perhaps the crackles whisper it into our heads when they visit without us knowing it.


I spotted Ink looking gloomy. She didn't like the berthing zone at all. But she was older than me and they did more things to her because her body was getting closer to the age they take more of an interest in. They take her into special rooms and they open her legs. She told me that once on exposure day. They open her legs and do other things that I'm not looking forward to.

Untitled (Part 5) Monsters

YELLOW YELLOW RED RED PIRKLE BROWN BROWN



Wombday's always mean a trip to the birthing zone. As we wear white we go straight after Sun Fest. My stomach was making all kinds of noises as I moved along the colourdoors because my zolk was pathetic. I can never tick very well when I am nervous and I hate going to the birthing zone. So most Wombday's I go empty and hungry.


But something was different. I was seeing them for the first time. At first they looked just like shadows but then they started to take shape. I saw one attached to Mentha at first. She always sticks to me when we go to the birthing zone because she is as nervous as me and we hold hands and share our three words. Then I noticed that everybody had one. Some were bigger than others and some were still and others were restless.


I wanted to say

                        can't you see them too?

but of course we only had three words and I also didn't want to waste all of mine before Noonfest. The lively one's weren't too bad, the ones that moved their arms and their heads, but the stiff ones were terrifying. They just hung like dolls.


I didn't have one or at least I could see it unless it was hiding behind my back.


Now at least I knew why the Crackle had visited be during the night. He had giving me the gift. The gift to see these monstrosities that nobody else could see. There's always a gift when they come but most of them are small gifts, like the gift to hold my breath underwater that I received when I was 9 or the gift of patience that I was given on my twelfth. But this was something entirely different. I could now see something that nobody else could see. Something that had been there all along, but hidden.


Not nice things. Monsters.

Untitled (Part 4)

I RECEIVED MY crackle in the middle of the night. It woke me up when I was dreaming about building a ship that was made of adjectives. Adjectives are the way we add colours to our words. I learned that from Helmet. We learn everything from helmet. I was building the ship with Noah and now he will be upset that I have left him to do it all by himself. I wonder if he is still there and whether he has sent out a search party. Dreams are stupid.



I don't know if there is any method or madness to receiving our crackles. I can go through phases where I get one every night and then I sometimes have to wait another fourweek to get one.

It landed on top of me and nudged me awake. They don't have any manners do crackles. They are ultimately selfish. They barge into your life and out again without as much as a sorry or a thank you.



I held out my bed hands and he gave it to me and then popped. They always pop quietly so that nobody in a surrounding capsule can hear them. I don't know if they live to fight another day or whether it is the end of their life cycle. Every crackle that visits me is a different colour and this one was green so maybe it has died in my capsule.


It's a triangle and it's the first time I have been given a triangle. I usually get round gifts but there is sometimes a square one. I am still half asleep and part of me is still collecting adjectives. So I am thinking about the word handsome when I hold the triangle to my head to let it start working. This one feels different. Stronger than the others I have been given. I feel like I need to lay down even though I am already lying down. This is a big one, I think. A very big one.








(C) Ally Atherton