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.