Permeating symbiosis

                                        Permeating symbiosis


Unnatural vibrations make the grass dance, each blade swaying like a palm tree in a hurricane. Housing projects have crumbled, boulders of sand blocking all exits. Darkness reins as they try and protect their queen. The chemical signature of danger fills the air.

                                                  * * *

“What is that noise?” She thinks to herself out loud as she looks through the window into the wilderness.
A series of bangs and taps ring into the blackness beyond her view, metallic Morse from a far away land steadily getting louder and louder. She cocks her head to one side and listens in concentration, straining her unmoving ear in the direction of the sound. It gets no clearer and is no less a puzzle to her freshly woken brain but somehow she thinks it is helping and she keeps straining her ear  at the sound.
She hears a zap, a loud electrical zap that seems to set all her hairs a tingle, then two more bangs and a tap.
Bang, Bang, Bang, Tap, Tap, Zap, Bang, Bang, Tap.
The same code rings into the night over and over again, coming closer as each second passes.
Something soft and misty presses itself against the window pane. It moves up and down, slinking and sliding in a way that makes her feel sick to watch.

                                                        * * *

“Kids! Keep it down! Dad is trying to watch T.V!”

                                                          * * *

Being a twin does have some advantages, like knowing what the other is thinking and feeling. At this moment they both know that the other hopes the industrial rhythm signals the return of their real parents, the ones their current owners stole them from. They have no evidence to back this theory up, just a childlike hope that they won’t turn out like them, anything but…

                                                              * * *

Grey mist descends to the ground, a ghostly replica from another dimension. It twists and curls with life, spreading its fingers to caress the surroundings. Soft, cushioning, strangling.

                                                                * * *


“What is that noise?” he thinks to himself.
It’s not like anything he has ever experienced before, it makes his whiskers vibrate in an unpleasant manner, like the time Bobby had pointed his amplifier at the floor. A strange mingle of smells wafts over the fence; oil, electricity, sweat and hormones. A sudden bright light blinds him, the ZAP! makes him spin in a circle, ears flat and tail between his legs. His throat rumbles with his own vibration that is soon drowned out by the artificial rumble. That is not an amplifier.

                                                                  * * *
         It is hard to sleep when the leaves won’t stop rustling and the branch under you feet keeps vibrating. All around town hundreds of eyes in feathered faces peer to the heavens pleading for sleep.

                                                                  * * *

Slowly he walks down the side of the house in an effort to see where the noise is coming from. In the distance he can hear his brethren having a broken conversation across fence palings and empty streets. He recognises old Mandy from up the road telling the younger ones to hush; they always get so excited at anything. He thinks to himself how lucky he has been, not having to look after his puppies like humans do.

                                                                    * * *

There is a thread of a memory wrapped around a thought stolen from the television. The first time she smelt ice-cream she was twelve, her mother didn’t believe in frozen dairy products for children. Donald Arbrough had taken her to the corner shop and brought her a heart shaped ice-cream on a stick. It smelled like love but in fact was probably more like infatuation or gratitude – it has always been hard for her to separate the two. This is not the memory thread she is thinking of though, this is merely a product of the thread. The thread is Donald Arbrough at seventeen.
More than that it was the smell of Donald as he climbed through her bedroom window on that late and stormy night. He had smelt strange, not unpleasant but strange, he smelt like electricity and excitement but also dangerous and unbalanced. She had not been wrong about the imbalance. The thought occurred to her that the thing making the noise smelt faintly like Donald had, which she received due to an advertisement for a show coming up next about a man with an obsession concerning storms and lightning. His wife turned to him in the promo and said “What is that smell?” and he replied that it was ozone. That is what Donald smelt like in a way, dangerous ozone. That’s what she could smell now

                                                                        * * *

“What is that noise?” they ask their parents.
Their parents mumble and continue their important tasks. Dad sits watching football, mum holds her glass to the bottle and pours more red liquid into the clear. Bang, Bang, Tap, Tap, Zap, Bang, Bang, Tap.
“Keep it downs kids, dad is watching the T.V again” mum says in a slow drawl. Brother and sister stare at each other then run up the stairs.
In their room they stare out the window towards the sound, some strange light streaks through the sky a few seconds before they hear the zap. They can’t see where it comes from but the light is purple and pretty and they both think separately in unison that they like that purple light.

                                                                                * * *

He was in love with Mandy for a long time. She is five years older than himself, so she was close to middle age when he was born. It doesn’t take long for a male dog to hit breeding age, at six months he was functional. His human male and Mandy’s human female used to walk them both together. Mandy had found him beautiful right away even though at first he thought she was his mum. She explained that his mother lived somewhere far away and the humans now looked after him. He wasn’t too sure he liked this idea. It only took two more moths for him to fall in love with Mandy, but it was a full year before she went on heat again. Unlike the other males in the city he asked her permission first. She thought that lovely and accepted. They had a litter of nine puppies which he saw for one day before they went away. Mandy said not to worry, she had been with them for six weeks and then, as was the custom, the humans took them away. Over time he learnt to deal with this fact, and he had another litter with Mandy a year later, this time fifteen pups. After that she never went on heat again, her humans had her “fixed”, whatever that meant. In his long life he had fathered over two-hundred and fifty children, none of whom he knew.

                                          * * *

“What is that noise?” she hears from within the dark.
Turning around she sees it is her beloved, her one and only, her one and only for now. He is leaning up in bed but shrouded in the sheets like a spectre.
“I don’t know” she answers then turns back towards the window and the soft mist probing at the glass.
The sound is louder now and she can feel it in her skull, it makes her brain feel like jelly and her eyes vibrate. Bang, Bang, Tap, Tap, Zap. It’s rhythmic, almost like music, but she can’t enjoy it. Nothing that makes your brain feel like jelly is good.
 
                                                * * *

From out the front he can see down the long winding street, but there is nothing there. The flashing continues through the sky lighting the street in the same way the fireworks do on New Years Eve. One of the younger pups has broken from its yard and runs past,
         “Hey Cole! What are you doing, go home!” he barks at the little one.
Cole spins quickly and runs towards him, his little tail tucked up between his legs,
            “Jake, what’s going on? What is that noise? My people left me all alone, I need someplace to hide!” Cole whines at Jake,
“There is a hole in the fence over there, you can come in here with me,” Jake grumbles, secretly happy for the company. 
Cole isn’t one of his children, he knows that for sure.

                                                  * * *

“What should we do? Should we go out and see?” the little girl asks her brother without looking at him at all.
She already knows he will say yes, but is only polite to ask after all. As the light flashes she can see two dogs in the yard across the street. Usually there was only one.
“Yes, we go outside and look. They won’t care, won’t notice. Yes, going outside is what I think we should do,” her brother answers in monotone, hypnotised by the sound and the flashing,
“The grass looks wet, I bet I can make my shoes fart!” She adds suddenly, breaking the spell and causing an eruption of laughter from both of them.
Nothing on earth is as funny as a farting noise.

                                                      * * *

“A penny” he says, still shrouded in his spectral covering.
“What?” She asks sharply, not looking away from the window.
“I said ‘A penny’, you know, a penny for your thoughts…” he answers, trailing off as he realises she doesn’t hear him at all.
Slowly he swings his legs over the side of the bed and uncovers himself. He walks behind her and holds her shoulders,
“Dangerous Ozone,” she mutters when his hands touch her skin.
“Have you figured it out yet?”
“What? The noise? No, but it must be big. It makes my eyes vibrate, doesn’t it yours as well?”
“Not really, it’s just a noise. You women are always making something out of something, it’s nothing. Come back to bed.”

                                                            * * *

The grass is indeed wet outside, the air smells funny to young nostrils. As they walk the sister’s shoes make “Buurrrt!” noises, aided by the twisting of her feet.
Zaps, bangs and taps make the world eerie, partly because underneath the noise lies nothing but a suffocating silence.
The children cross the road, footsteps muffled in rubber. Then back up the other side. More “Buurrrts! ” on the grass as they walk towards metal fence, two brown eyes and a slowly wagging tail.

                                                * * *

“Oh Jesus, what are those kids doing out there?” she asks no-one.
“I don’t know, come back to bed,” no-one whines in return.

                                                    * * *

Jake watches the children carefully through the fence. Cole near the kennel sleeping. Jake knows if need be he can jump the fence and go to them. They shouldn’t be out there alone.

                                                      * * *

“I can’t stand this anymore, I’m going home.” He says as he again steps away from the bed.
She mumbles about children and dogs but not once does she turn around. The clanking of his belt buckle fills the room, but then the moment is past and they have no future.
He takes a long time to leave.
Before he pulls on his boots he stops to scribble on something

                                                        * * *

“Who’s your friend Jakey?” the little girl asks.
Jake stares at her blankly in reply.

                                                          * * *

He left the lamp on. Talk about breaking the ambiance. Walking over she sees a little card propped against the hard metal stem, illuminated by soft light. Biro scribbles cover the place of a phone number. Above, in black printed ink:
                                         
                                              Peter Harvey
                                        Ice cream connoisseur 

                                                            * * *

Cole cracks one eye to look at the children. He is happy to so people, even if they are only small ones. People have thumbs, they can undo locks and use can openers.

                                                              * * *

Walking to the other bedside table she opens the draw. She removes an orange bottle of white pills. There is nothing like a few sleeping tablets to help celebrate bad life decisions.

                                                                * * *

         The code will continue to come closer and closer until finally it passes the houses here. By morning it will have moved on to a new town and a new street, impacting new lives with new names, new personalities and new problems that all feel the same.