Nursery Rhymes for the Mentally Ill

I save tiny Johnathon McSpar from falling off of a six foot building, exciting!

Chapter 10 - Ash

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John, Went to bed with his trousers on; One shoe off, and the other shoe on, now why in the heck would he do that?

            I was in my room doing my homework and studying for our semester benchmarks, when I heard my phone ring. It was from Dani, but it made absolutely no sense, it was just gibberish. I replied with a “?” but nothing came back for a few minutes, so I stopped constantly checking my phone.

            “Ash, are you done with your homework?” my mom yelled from downstairs.

            “Almost, I just have a few pages of notes that I have to go over,” I yelled back. Most of the time my family is too lazy to go up and down the stairs to talk to each other, so our voices are very developed from shouting across the house. I stared blankly at my composition notebook, thinking about Ross and his gorgeous smile, his luscious hair, and his super sexy eyes. Ugh, I wish he was here so I could just passionately kiss him. With passion of course, he made me tingle, and get goose bumps. He was so beautiful.

            “What are you doing? Did you know that you’re drooling?” my brother Max stared at me, waiting for an answer, “Never mind, I personally don’t care about your mental issues, but you should probably turn yourself in to an insane asylum, no joke,” He stared at me with his just kidding, confirm that I didn’t hurt your feelings face.

            “Whatever, I was just thinking about… celery, why does it have to be so… stringy? You know what I’m talking about right?” I said as I shoved him out my door. I sat on my bed, once again and my phone rang. This time it was just blank. Something was happening with Dani’s phone. Maybe it was just a glitch, but I had a strange feeling in my gut, that something was wrong.

            I looked out my window, and the moon was all wacky. I don’t know if I was high, but it sure felt like it. I felt like I was being sucked out the window, towards the moon almost. Then the moon started turning a dark grey. I opened my window, yeah, I know you just thought to yourself No Ash, don’t open the window, because even if I tell you not to, you’re going to do it anyways! Yeah stereo type horror film, but something was just beckoning me towards the moon. I opened the window and the moon was zooming towards me, like when you press the zoom button on a camera. I was being sucked in to the freaking moon. I didn’t scream, because for some odd reason, I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. Everything turned into a weird, almost sparkly, black hole. It looked to me as if I was in the middle of a tornado.

When I resigned as the mayor of loony town, or in other words, done being thrown in a “moon tornado” I was in a foggy, old English village. All of the one story houses were just, like, a foot taller than me, and the people were about three shorter. There was an old man in a two story building who was arguing with, probably his son, about something with a shoe and trousers, and then the son fell out of the window. I was right underneath him, and I figured he was little enough, so I caught him. He was struggling to get out of my arms.

            “I thank ye for savin’ me life, Ma’ Lady, but I’m worth nothing but a fist full of mud, Ma’ Lady,” when he talked he hesitated to look straight into my eyes, he stared at the ground, “Why would ye, a lady of the King’s court, be savin’ me life?”

            “Oh, I’m not in anyone’s court, in fact I don’t even live in this decade, or even close to this decade. See, look at the clothes that I’m wearing, I’m not in this century. But I was glad to save your life,” he finally looked into my eyes, with a confused, pondering expression.

            “Then, why are ye so tall in such a little town like this? Are you part of the Humpty Dumpty escape?”

            “What? No, I don’t even know what that is!”

            “Oh, well then you better get off to a hidin’ place, Ma’ Lady. You don’t want to be caught by the King’s men. They’re usually a drinkin’, and they don’t do their jobs as told, so if they see you they’ll punish ye whether you’ve done nothin’ or not. I know exactly where ye can go. See that sewer, over yonder? Hide in there, and you’ll be fine. The kings men never even go close to there, because of the horrid a stinkin’. Oh, and my name is Johnathon McSpar. You’ll find that most of this town is of Scottish background. Well, you best be getting’ off,” he nodded and walked off casually. I guess now all I had to do was climb into a stinky sewer, probably with rats and icky spiders.

 I walked over to the sewer, and opened the lid thingy. When I started to climb in, I heard loud breathing, and I felt the person’s breath on my ankles as I climbed down the ladder.

            “Ash! Oh, I’m so glad to see you, or, know your presence,” I jumped off of the ladder as quick as I could, and tried to look threatening.

            “Who’s there?”

            “It’s me, Dane!” a feeling of complete and utter relief came over all of my muscles. I was not there alone, better yet, I was there with my best friend. I was about to respond when I heard a loud screeching noise, and light came into the sewer. Dani and I both got in a ninja pose, ‘cause you know, you always look tough when you look like a ninja. Before the lid closed I saw black clothing, and white and Blue hair. That was Alice, and I was sure of it.

            “Alice, it’s me, Ash, what are you doing here?” it took a moment for her to respond, and I heard heavy breathing, and loud rustling. Then her feet landed on the ground.

            “Well, I should ask you the same thing, but first I need to get out of this wretched dress, I hate wearing this thing in sewers. I couldn’t see but I knew that me and Dani exchanged looks. I decided not to respond.

            “Maybe once the king’s men are gone, we can steal some things from the local shop. I’m sure they sell clothes around here somewhere, and I have nimble, stealthy hands,” Dani said in a hushed tone. She could hear the king’s men’s horses, hitting the ground with their hooves. Dani was so cool in that way. She chooses to be little miss goody two shoes, but in “real life” she does whatever she wants to do, and never gets caught, and she has insane hearing, except when someone’s talking to her, and for some strange reason, she’s always watching shadows, staring at the ground. Most of the time she can see you coming. I guess I have a super power too, in a way. I can somehow find something dead anywhere I go. It's like I'm attracted to it. For example, one time when I was eight I was playing hide and seek outside with my brother and I felt pulled to the perfect hiding place, which was behind a bsh, which was at that time the final resting place of a mauled over fawn. I was traumatized I don’t know about Alice because I don’t know her that well. I guess on our little adventure here, we’re going to be doing a lot of bonding.

            I heard someone sigh in the darkness, apparently Dani and Alice heard it too.

            “Wasn’t me, must have been someone else,” I could just barely make out their facial expressions, and I knew at that instant, that we were not afraid of anything.