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.