Category: Sandra

The bright red ball bounces over, coming to rest by his foot. He knows he is expected to pick it up and throw it back, but he doesn’t want to. He nudges it away with his foot and looks around him at the compound, its bright green astroturf, the high fencing, bedecked with lanterns and, at the far end, an azure pool of cool water, filled with excited adults, interacting, and having FUN!

He hugs himself in an effort to become smaller, an invisible ball of misery on the stool in the corner, his snug, ratty jumper enveloping him, its black colour an act of defiance, the colour of funerals, and misery. They had tried to make him wear the approved clothing but he was going to be fucked sideways if they thought he was going to put that romper suit on, and if Mr ‘Call-me-Mark’ Petersen thought he was going to wear anything in primary colours, he would advise him to start watching hell, for when it froze over.

Prologue

The girl heard the key in the door and her mum stopped singing. ‘Clear that up, love, quickly now’ she said, and the girl started to pile her Lego into a box. Her mum laid plates on the table and pushed her hair back from her face. The girl could tell she was nervous, and her tummy started to feel funny.

Her front door slammed behind her father, and the girl knew it was not going to be one of the good nights. Her mum looked at her with scared eyes and jerked her head toward the hallway. She knew it meant ‘run upstairs’ but she didn’t want to leave her. Her father came into the room looking like thunder and swaying into the doorway. She knew that meant he’d been drinking, and she trembled, she knew this was when he was most dangerous.

Her mum tried to smile and said ‘Shall I put the dinner out?’ and with a mumbled ‘yes’, her father slumped at the table. Her mum served the dinner, with shaking hands. All it took was a splash of gravy landing on his trousers, and the girl knew what was going to happen, like it always did. Her father’s roar of rage, the swinging fist, her mother crumpling to the floor and curling up. But this time was worse, her father wouldn’t stop, and she could hear herself whimpering ‘Please daddy, please stop, please…’ but her father carried on kicking and punching.

A white light grew behind her eyes, a pressure building until her head felt too small and something had to give, she just wanted him to stop, he had to stop, stop, ‘STOP! she  was screaming, and the knife was in his hand and he plunged it into his stomach, again and again and again, he had to stop, stop and the blood was pouring over his trousers, much worse than the gravy and her father fell over onto the floor and she was screaming and crying, snot running down her face, and her mum looked at her father and at the girl and her mum picked up the knife and then there was a policeman and more police and she was so tired and her head hurt so much… she had to sleep…

I knocked on Mrs Askham’s door, I’d chosen my time well, having watched Mr Askham leave for work as usual. She opened it, and stared at me for long seconds before, grudgingly, it seemed opening it wide for me. I followed her into the kitchen.

‘Tea?’ she asked.

‘No, thank you’ I made it a rule never to take refreshments at a client’s house, especially when I was about to break bad news.

I plopped an envelope on the counter. She looked at it like I’d put a doggy bag of steaming shit on there, which in one way, I had.

The tower lay on its side, stretched out for a half a mile along the desert floor, half buried by wind and sand, only the windows on the upper half still visible, like implacable black eyes. No one knew when it had fallen, but all the legends spoke of the time when it had pointed straight up to the stars, a long metal tube, its purpose, surely, to talk with the heavens.

A town had grown up, long ago, sustained in the barren dryness by the magic from the tower: the lake. No-one knew how this gift worked, but they knew the great ancestors had discovered the secret of endless water, pouring into the lake. Water was taken by the townsfolk and water must be given, a mantra every child learned at their mother’s knee. All wastewater was siphoned back to the tower, emerging, like a miracle, into clean lake water. Blessed Water. Not a drop was spilled, to knock over a glass of water was a dreadful act, to spit was a sin.

Later, the town was moved, and the palace was built on the shores of the lake, along with the merchant houses, men made rich by the caravan route that passed through the town, an oasis in a world of deserts. 

Did anyone go into the tower? Of course, for the great miracle of the water needed tending to continue, but this was the job of the priests, men who braved the interior, for the heat inside the metal tower was ferocious, and at night when the sun had sunk, the heat rolled off the tower’s sides in blistering waves, as it cooled. Then the shaven-headed priests would enter the tower, dressed only in loin cloths, through the base and work their prayers to keep the life-giving water flowing.

Melissa had lived in the town near the tower base for all her twenty-four years, and she could not imagine any other life, for she had never heard tell of another way, except the stories she loved, passed on by the caravan traders, whispered and contorted by each mouth they passed through until they became wild tales, of fact and fiction melted in the same pot until one was indistinguishable from the other; stories of far off cities with unbelievable wonders, metal carts that powered themselves, towers almost as tall as their fallen one, where people lived in the clouds, or, even stranger, of places with lakes so big their far shores were invisible. So much water, but in a cruel twist, the gods had salted it. Her mother scoffed at these tales, ‘stories for children’ she said, rolling her eyes. But she believed the one about the giant lakes, because the undrinkable water was proof, in her eyes, that the gods punished the sinners. Melissa knew her mother was fond of stories of retribution and punishment by the gods.