Wattys 2020 Boot Camp

K M Maulder - Thistle Wish

Showcase entry for MoodyMooseMouse

Note: New Zealand English spelling

Pitch:

A wannabe window dresser born with abnormally fragile skin learns to love herself and discovers that others do, too, scars and all.

Blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Emily Moon, born with abnormally fragile skin, dreams of a glamorous career in window dressing. But, for her, it's like being thrown inside of a fishbowl full of piranha as the simplest of tasks prove hazardous.

Stung by past experiences and in fear of rejection, Emily hides her condition from her new friends. A difficult guise to uphold, especially when they coax her into playing Ping-Pong squash in a concrete laundromat.

All it takes is one night dressed as Max from 'Where the Wild Things Are,' a missing unicorn pinata, and several bad errors in judgment for Emily to realise that sometimes, the worst that could happen could also be the best thing...ever.

Thistle Wish is a tale of creativity, abnormality, humour, and heartache and other such poop which life throws at you, so ...DUCK!

First 1000 words:

THE SNOWMAN MASSACRE

Wellington, New Zealand Spring 1997

A young girl stands frozen at the scene of a snowman massacre. The snowy ground is speckled crimson. Torsos and heads lie scattered...

I sigh and remind myself that it is not the end of the world.

The snowmen are stacks of car tyres painted white. The ground is Dacron - that white fluffy stuff used for stuffing cushions and toys. The blood is mine and minimal.

I hadn't realised I'd cut myself until I noticed the trail of blood following me around in circles like some hilarious Winnie the Pooh story. But nothing about this is funny.

This is supposed to be a festive window display to entice onlookers to come inside - forget overdrafts - and book flights to a faraway destination -where it is yet to be snowing or Christmas. But what the boss wants the boss gets.

To succeed Emily, you must be one step ahead of the competition.

It is only October. I don't get why all the stores fill their windows with snowy scenes anyway, Christmas is about sunshine, beach barbeques and Pacific Island holidays.

The travel agent, a woman with hair twisted up like soft-serve ice cream, calls over the partition, "How's it going in there?"

"Almost done," I say, attempting to sound confident and cheerful. It is a fragile guise.

It's stinking hot in here despite the snowy outlook and my frustration is at its tipping point; one nudge and I'm likely to burst into tears.

"Good, I'll be closing up in five."

"Okay, great."

She doesn't glance in to check on my work and with any luck my boss, Felicity Smyth, won't return to see how I'm getting on either. She left half-way through the construction lesson without any explanation or further instructions other than, "Gotta go, don't screw it up."

My parents didn't want me to apply for this job, not until I finished high school anyhow but jobs like this are rare. Great Aunty Peggy said if you don't follow your dreams, you'll end up walking around in circles digging a grave with your footsteps.

I want to be a world-famous window dresser, designing displays for prodigious stores in places like London and New York. I want my work to be 'oohed' and 'aahed' at and to feature in glossy designer magazines. Then, after I am dead, I want the photographs of my work to be preserved in a large book, the kind that you must wear white gloves to touch.

Felicity installed displays at her mother's travel agency to fund herself through architecture school. It blossomed into a business, and now that her architectural firm is up and running, she has hired me to do, what I thought would be, the fun stuff.

It's not Harrods or Bloomingdale's but every dream must start somewhere.

I sit on the last standing half-of-a snowman and plaster the side of my hand in band-aids which are all a little crinkled from being in my back pocket all day.

I still can't figure out how I cut myself. Usual story, mysterious bruises and torn skin and no war story to explain it. A classmate from high school termed my affliction The Jelly-Skin Syndrome. I prefer my dad's label - Velvet Butterfly.

There is an official name. The strange and rare do not go completely unnoticed.

Our family doctor, a shaky-handed old man rumoured to like his gin, came across a passage in a medical journal and half-heartedly chucked it my way.

The double- barrelled label was pasted into my records. It was as explanatory as the ink stain beside it and could as well have said "gobbledygook" by the way everyone furrowed their brows when reading it, before asking me, aged twelve, what on earth it meant.

There was no guidebook for my parents. The doctor merely shrugged, "your guess is as good as mine" then advised me not to have children and avoid horse riding.

I don't utter the name by choice. It feels too lumpy on my tongue and fear my friends will deem me crippled and diseased. The truth is, the world and I are simply not compatible.

I call it a Curse.

"Two minutes," the agent calls out.

No time for brooding, I must fix this Christmas gore.

I hastily rebuild the snowmen, pile fresh 'snow' over the top of the blood stains and plant a large sign in the middle.

Presto! Switzerland awaits you!

Another parking ticket awaits me, flapping like a dove trapped under my wiper.

Two days in a row I have had my income chopped in half. 1997 was supposed to be the year my 'dream career comes to fruition.'

My horoscope lied to me - go figure.

MOA POINT

A bunch of rowdy seagulls tap-dance across the roof of my car. Their prehistoric feet hammer out my father's favourite morning tune: "Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead. Get up, get up, get out of bed. Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red. Live, love, laugh and be happy."

I would prefer to be nudged awake with a gentle tune; one easily hushed by the tapping of a button. Though, until I can find a suitable flat, a rude awakening it is.

I sit up. My sleeping bag concertinas about my waist, causing all my exposed extremities to instantly turn blue. I quickly raise the towel jammed in the back-passenger window, press a palm to the cold glass, swirl it around and form a porthole to the outside world.

The sky is crisp blue and clear.

Good Morning Wellington.

"Geez, it's cold." I exhale a puff of mist, snuggle back inside and pull the rim up to my chin.

Dragging up yesterday's clothes from the bottom of my sleeping bag, I then begin a well-rehearsed Houdini performance of getting dressed without exiting my bedding.

After several minutes of twisting about and no doubt looking like an idiot, I wriggle out of my cocoon emerging like a battered butterfly.

Ta-Dah!