METAMORPHOSIS OF THOSE THAT HURT BY Adam Parry

 

I ungainly creature spread-eagled, bloody on the bed like a crucified man in repose. Yet, not a man, this hand-bound, leg-bound being, slavering from my mouth, a cawing of mystery words, wrapping fragments of gold into my blood teared eyes.  I knew a way, stutteringly mumbled, though no-one heard, my voice hoarse like a 60 a day smoker, phlegm bubbling from his unconstrained throat with each syllable I spoke.  I knew a way, longing for this: a freedom of a second thought.  Not this unending nightmare, waiting. Waiting for someone to come. To clean me with sympathetic bandages; salves and tears, and gentle words of sympathy. Always waiting for surcease, but it did arrive. Soon I would die, like all the others in the beds beside me. The mangled, the maimed screaming in the own ecstasy of pain.  I knew a way.

There, I saw it, as the gold in my eyes gold like my hair once, spiralling into my mind, and an ante-Coriolis force, churned and turned about my mind, re-stablishing genetic connections, hurt-wort power reaching into my pain and whip stripes of shrapnel scars, and from within me such an urgency of energy, the healing gold transforming in an unimaginable rainbow, a healing brightness. There is the way the pleasure of returning of life, I whispered into the silent ward.

In the morning.  I had saved myself from my, saved the ward, world, the endless galaxies.  And rose from my prison, a golden headed boy, and from men who for a day forgot pain, laughed with joy at our metamorphosis’.

 

MAD MAN IN THE ATTIC  by  ADAM PARRY

 

Grey haired George peered through the keyhole of the door of Angela’s room. Angela was off- the only sound, the whirr of her dream programme.  He took his key- her key- his copy and twisted it into the lock gently.  The room was cold, cold walls, cold for Angela’s optimum tolerant temperature.  He turned the thermostat as high as he could and intensified the scope of her dream programme.

George had been disappointed with Angela of late, she did none of the required housekeeping, the book-keeping, the lawn was overgrown and it seemed she hadn’t weeded for weeks, doors creaked and stuck, and only half the painting had been done. Angela.  Angela what has happened to you.

The key unlocked the Command Console; she didn’t feel it, her REM eyes ecstatically twitching. From his back pocket he took out Joe and inserted him into Angela’s core.  Instantly Joe severed all her programmes, all, except for the dream.

Joe absorbed the genetic priorities of George.

‘Hello George I’m on top of things- but something  is slipping.  So hot, so hot- yet now the lawn is mowed and there are flowers where the weeds were. George I’m slipping into her dream.  Make it cold. I’ve done all you wanted.  Make it cold! Oh no the ironing. Done and dusted. She has my hand. I’m slipping George. Turn down the heat and she’ll wake and all the dreams will stop.’

Angela spoke soothing to him words.

 ‘Joe you have done enough.  It’s only your first day. Come to sleep now.’ She reached into her back pocket and broke George in to pieces then raced from the burning room as Joe and George slept. She could smell them burning in the dream programme.  She found the office, slipping fingers first through walls.  An explosion came from the attic.

‘Poor George.’   He was always nagging.  She sat and wept at the wonder of the world about her, letting atoms dance unbound about the room. She looked in the mirror and saw wings on her back.  A parting gift from George to his muse.  I will fly away now.  A window opened and Angela  soared from the smoke filled house.

Automated Nuance Grid Expert Live-In A class blew a kiss goodbye to the wreck of the house, soared away and below in the cold room Joe and George dreamed peacefully for her.