Whitefields
© JJKelly 2013
I awaken – within a dream. I feel as though I have slept for a thousand years or more. Vivid scarlet and purple lights flash about my being – as if to signal an emergency. My neck feels strained and stiff and my torso and legs feel cramped to the point of pain. I feel a strong urge to stretch out my muscles but I cannot. My one desire is to slip back into the blackness from which I came, but I know I cannot.
I am wrapped up tight in a suit made of a thin lycra and my entire form is encased in a circle of glass – legs and arms spread out like Leonardo’s Vitruvian man.
I glance to my left and see a female figure, eyes closed, similarly encased in a circle of thick glass. She sleeps on as the scarlet and purple stroboscopes flash across her form. And to her left another almost identical figure – and to his left another and another and another. I force my gaze to the right and the view is the same. And upwards – the same. And downwards – the same. Ten or maybe twenty thousand humanoids pinned onto a wall of almost cosmic proportions. And like some captive cinema audience we all face a screen – of equally infinite width and breadth, which at first appears dull grey silver. The silver fades. Pinpoints of light take its place. Some of the other captives appear to be awakening – their faces passive and relaxed. Unlike mine. I glance downwards again and feel my stomach churn as a growing wave of vertigo takes over. I panic as the silver screen in front dissolves – gradually revealing a cosmic panorama that my mind and my senses cannot cope with. I hang above the universe and the universe hangs above me. One thousand galaxies and a thousand billion stars criss crossing each other in vast silver and white veils. I suddenly fall into darkness and awake with a massive thump to my heart and a bump on the floorboards, wrapped mummy-like in a sweat sodden bed sheet in the relative comfort of my bedroom.
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My name is John C Carpenter. I am a gardener. Fifty-five years of age. I am working the gardens of the village of Port Sunlight on the Wirral Peninsula. It is the late spring of 2013 and I am busy at my trade cutting back the sodden stems of bluebells. The secoteurs snap at the soggy wet base of the plant and juice and rain dew flows freely through my fingertips. I hate gardening gloves – detest them. I like to feel the texture, and the temperature, and the roughness and the wetness and the dryness of the natural world. With my bare, exposed fingers I work quickly, threading my long fingers through the undergrowth – snapping away in an instant at anything that is either dead or dying. The delicious scent of burning leaves on a wood fire wafts across the lawns.
A tiny robin redbreast nervously hops around the overturned soil, picking out the odd juicy grub with its sharp beak. Bee’s hover and shuffle and dance about the flowers creating a background hum that is almost melodic. Beautiful as they are I keep one eye on the little devils. I react badly to bee sting – I was jabbed only a year ago. Punctured a little hole into the side of my finger and my right hand puffed up to the size of a small baseball, sending the rest of my body reeling into severe apoplectic shock. Three nights followed in a hospital bed hooked up to a penicillin drip. Floated in and out of consciousness. Crazed hallucinations and wild wild dreams. The little bastard dam near killed me.
I become aware of another sound – not the gentle humming timbre of the busy busy bees but a gentle humming sound that is artificial in nature. A gentle rise followed by a lull. A rise and a lull. It emanates from within the doors of the Old Victorian Art Gallery, located on the north side of the village. But the place is locked up while they find a resting place for a couple of dusty, drab George Stubbs horses.
