identities but by his own disinterest in them. Characters from his imagination stand beckoning him to join them; They range from a well-built hunch-back, to a man in an orange martial arts kit, with hair of fire, to a blonde boy his own age, clad in a green tunic and wielding a short sword. These, he idly supposes, must be his childhood role models. The terms – ‘childhood’, and ‘role model’, seem vacuous in this context; though he knows of no other. He only briefly wonders why they are there, or where he knows them from. What is there to know of - only stormy sky and sea, the ship and its featureless sailors, himself and his parents, and now this rock with its out of place ‘superheroes’? He looks to his parents - they need him. The new crowd; they look too welcoming, too desperate for his company. They are familiar alright; too familiar. Behind them though, the cave beckons. Yes, the boy’s parents need him, but the boy needs the cave. Whatever is lurking inside the giant
Two lighthouse-beacon yellow eyes slowly escalate to the top of the cavern, casting just enough light to illuminate the shadow of the behemoth upon which they are mounted. The boy gasps – stumbling in his hurry to step back. The others appear to have been expecting this; they shoot out in all directions to mount their attack. The features of the creature on hand are thrown into sharper relief by an energy blast from the martial artist with the fiery hair. It is as though the beast - albeit lizard like in the detail of its scales and its head - is a gigantic caterpillar, and the cavern is its perfectly tailored cocoon. It is not long either, before the extent of its power is also revealed. Though the heroes battle furiously, swarming around the cavern; landing one hit after another; their efforts are in vain. The hunchback hurls a stalagmite straight for the beast’s eye; but it crumbles uselessly on impact, ineffective as everything else so far. It is all the heroes can do to avoid being swatted.
the green tunic is tossed aside and impaled on his own sword, the martial artist’s flame is extinguished and his body consumed, the hunch-back is left so badly broken that he no longer even looks crippled. All the others follow suit. The boy curls himself into an ever tighter ball, perhaps hoping to fold himself into such a tiny position that he becomes invisible, or simply ceases to exist. Facing the wall, he awaits his death; by hunger, or hypothermia, or by the beast, which, having defended its territory has descended back into the depths, for now. The boy trembles; but the chill of this barren, oceanic outpost is nothing to the chill that has descended on his heart. His parents have left him to fend for himself, his role models have proved nothing more than cardboard cut-outs of the values that they represent, and he is alone in a world that would be no clearer to him even if the sun did finally come up. Dawn would only dispel the visible darkness. Why had
He clamps his teeth together, clenches his fists, and turns away from what he knows rock formation, he has to confront it. He clamps his teeth together, clenches his fists, and turns away from what he knows; he tells himself to be brave. Striding toward his destination, he ignores the over-the-top celebrations of his ‘heroes’ at his decision, and glances back one more time - though it is hard to see through the darkness and rain, he is certain that the ship has already disembarked, and his parents with it. In such an unfathomable world, with so few things he understands, the little boy suddenly feels just that; a little boy – incapable of fending for himself. It is the heroes now who are stone faced, their eyes dead set on the void. The boy pads after them into the gloom, lagging behind. The inside of the cavern is almost completely hollowed out; an naturally formed, gigantic round tower. Around a central abyss that descends probably to the bottom of the world, runs an alcove just wide enough to walk on. Stillness clings to everything inside; the kind of stillness that begins to stir as soon as it’s perceived. He senses a faint quivering in the air, and just as he notices that his new companions have assumed fighting stances, the quivering becomes a rumbling, and a groan shakes from the belly of the world to the apex of its skies. Out of the depths slides a barely perceptible, but huge, movement.
The boy watches on helplessly, crawling into the most secluded niche he can find to escape the monster’s destructive thrashing. Occasionally one of the heroes will meet the boy’s gaze with pleading eyes – as if he could do something about their impending deaths, as if they expected more. One by one, each of them is sent crashing into the cavern walls; the boy in
he made this decision? Why had he left the people who loved him; who he loved? Already soaked to the bone and shaking violently - there is no visible difference as the boy begins to sob. In a small house, on the edge of a small town, sandwiched between a busy main road and a lake, sometime in the early hours, a young family of three are asleep in their home. A little boy is snuggled between his parents. Like shifting tides, their sleeping forms rise and fall in the faint light from the cars outside. A little later, the boy gets up again. Thirsty, he goes to the kitchen in search of a drink. Luckily, there is a glass of water waiting, already poured on the table. It is in one of the semi-spherical glasses, as he calls them - the snow globes. He sometimes wonders if, like snow globes, they contain little worlds of their own; maybe he and his family really live in an upside-down snow globe? Such thoughts warm him - as he gets older, the world seems to get less interesting. Dreams it seems, have shorter lifespans than their humans. Remembering what he’s gotten up for, he takes a sip from the glass, and totters back to bed. Soon the rise and fall of the shifting tides will recommence. They are calm – to the naked eye.
29