Monday 16 July 2018

Fulgey


At work and participating in some sort of festival (to do with American Indians - though our office is not dressing up - and I am at the head of our people chain). Ess Tee - seemingly frozen in a perpetual sarcastic kinda hang-dog expression - is part of our group. I can see guys, dressed 100% as per the cliche movie Indians, flooding from the doorways and entrances of offices around us, all heading for some central tower. The front guy of every group is dressed up. As I am not in costume I decide to affect an exaggerated and stuttered hop from one foot to the other, arching over and mimicking (but not actually making) the classic "woo woo woo!" Indian sound with my hand and mouth. I sense my hopping is increasingly out of time and misjudged, the rest of the chain doing their best to copy my movements. Aware of the lines and lines of people converging on the central tower. Do we divert? Or am I distracted? But suddenly I am in a queue and presented with a huge plate/tray of food drowned in a thick, red, salsa-esque sauce. I should know the food I am being handed - it's meat, I'm sure - but it looks like donuts of some sort underneath-

"I cannot believe it's been a year", I say. I am really obsessed on this point, repeating it out loud and in my head over and over. I just cannot understand how the gap between festivals (?) is a year and it seems I'm repeating the experience immediately. As I'm thinking and trying to discuss this-

I'm on a bike - but am I jangling keys in my hand? - cycling out and about in a typically Stranger Things suburban outskirts-meets-rural area. Two(?) other kids are cycling up ahead of me. I feel I'm still struggling with, and arguing, the notion that it cannot have been a year. It's not possible for time to pass so quickly. Suddenly this kid called Arge, in classic skinny white tee and immaculate styled bowlcut, and myself are on the one bike having decided to take a shortcut or make our own way. Oddly, as we slowly traverse the rough, mossy, damp terrain ahead of us, the ground covered in a fine coating of browned pine needles, he seems to be underneath the bike's frame, looking up at me and talking to me from under the wheels. I tell him to watch his head on the wheels as we negotiate a particularly humpbacked peice of ground, worried that he'll be squashed. Quickly the POV is up very close to the ground - almost as if it's some sort of 'front wheel cam' - as we negotiate the hill. See the wheel easing its way over the grass with considerable effort. We pass a knife - I know instantly it's a knife though it's retracted and in a neat black leather slipcase with a silver keyring at one end. It's stark and black, crisp and neat against the damp grass. Then creep past very slowly, gingerly passing a sharp-featured, clean-cut youth - the knife owner - asleep on his back. So very close as we inch by in 'front wheel cam' mode. Notice he is very clean shaven but for a single hair, about a centimetre long and dark, growing out from between the underside of his nose and top lip. Once we are past we look back, a wider shot, and he sits up on his elbows and challenges us, mentioning using his knife against our "shitty penknife"-

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