flamed.orange.tiger

Another rough-as-fuck late-night laptop discovery. A MAHOGANY-PANELLED ROOM, WELL-LIT. THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH WALL-TO-WALL BOOKSHELVES TEEMING WITH HEFTY AND DUSTY LEATHER-BOUND TOMES. ON THE WALLS ARE DOZENS OF FRAMED AND OFFICIAL-LOOKING CERTIFICATES. THERE IS A SOFA, AND IN FRONT OF IT IS A COFFEE TABLE. ON THE TABLE LIES A BOX OF TISSUES AND A MUG OF TEA. A WOMAN IS SITTING UPRIGHT ON A LEATHER SOFA. SHE IS SITTING AWKWARDLY AND TENSELY, WEARING A STIFF COAT AND A SMALL HAT WITH A LEATHER HANDBAG PERCHED ON HER KNEES. SHE IS AROUND SIXTY YEARS OLD. AS SHE SPEAKS, IT BECOMES CLEAR SHE IS EXTREMELY NERVOUS. THE MORE SHE SPEAKS, THE MORE SHE RELAXES. I’d always loved children, you know, ever since I was a little girl. I’d always be playing with those baby dolls, you know the plastic sort with those ugly-looking faces. I’d always wanted three children myself, two girls and a boy ideally. I had their names picked out and everything! Mad, me. When me and my husband bought the house I had to make sure there were two spare bedrooms. I wanted to get started on making a family of our own as soon as we could, really. We were a happy couple, me and Brian. We got married young and we had a comfortable life, nothing fancy but with no troubles really. We weren’t rich but we had good lives. We had hobbies and friends and jobs and our nice house. It was perfect, or was going to be when we had kids. THE WOMAN IS QUIET FOR A MOMENT AS SHE PUTS HER BAG ONTO THE FLOOR. SHE PICKS UP THE CUP OF TEA FROM THE COFFEE TABLE. SHE SIPS IT SLOWLY BEFORE PLACING IT CAREFULLY BACK WHERE IT WAS. SHE SPEAKS SLOWLY AS IF CHOOSING HER WORDS WITH GREAT CARE. SHE SUDDENLY LOOKS VERY SORROWFUL AND PAINED. When we found out we couldn’t have them…well, that really affected us. Me more than Brian, probably because I felt it was my fault really. And it was. I took it hard. And Brian, bless him, Brian was so concerned about me, but there was nothing he could say to make it any better. I think that’s when he started getting ill, and the doctors, they tell me it‘s nothing to do with that, but I knew it was, I knew it. He died a few years later. It was awful, the saddest feeling in the world. There was little old me in our house that suddenly felt huge. I didn’t know what to do with myself! I spent the next few months pottering around the house, doing the daily chores, fixing up the garden a little bit. Not really sure what I was doing really, just carrying on like always. I’d quit work because Brian had left me a fair bit of money to do what I liked with and I’d hardly touched a penny. He’d told me to enjoy it, but there wasn’t any money in the world that could make me happy. The only thing that I had was God. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d never been the religious type, not me nor my mother or her mother. We were a Christian family, but we never went to church, never prayed. We just weren’t the type. But Brian had wanted to be buried in a church, all traditional you know and the service was just lovely. I sat there and I sang hymns out of the little books and I looked at all the fancy old stained-glass windows and I promised myself I’d go back there every week. And I did. I didn’t go for the socialising though, I wasn’t into that. I was there for God, and only for God. SHE SIPS FROM THE CUP OF TEA AGAIN AND LEANS FORWARD AS IF ABOUT TO REVEAL SOME JUICY GOSSIP. This is the part that I found strange. I mean, you hear about God appearing everywhere but you just think the person’s crazy. I mean, the face of Jesus on a slice of toast! I read that one in the newspaper and I thought the world had gone mad. SHE REPLACES THE TEA AND REMOVES HER HAT, HOLDING IT ON HER LAP. But God came to me in a dream and he said that I had a purpose. He told me I had a job, a really, really important job, and if I did it right I’d join Him in Heaven as one of His angels. And of you course you don’t say no to God! So I told Him I’d do anything, and He smiled and told me it was nothing bad. He told me I was going to have a son, a boy I’d rescue from poverty and certain death. And no, he wouldn’t be my biological son, but what did that matter since we are all God’s children anyway. He told me about the millions of people who fight for and save and adopt children and how they’re going to join Him in Heaven. I just knew it was right for me. Brian and I had talked about adopting and fostering and the like but neither of us had fancied the idea of raising someone else’s baby. It hadn’t been right then but now it felt like nothing had ever been more right. With Brian gone and it just being me…I was in a good position financially and I’d always wanted to be a mum. But I didn’t just want to adopt, I really wanted to help. I wanted to give a poor child a chance. So I arranged it all and when it was all sorted out I was very excited, you know. SHE BEGINS TO VISIBLY RELAX. SHE IS OFF IN HER OWN LITTLE WORLD OF HAPPY MEMORIES, HER VOICE TAKES ON A LIGHTER TONE. The first time I saw him…he was a lovely little lad. He was seven years old but you wouldn’t know from looking at him, him being such a tiny little mite, and his name was Alex. He was a scrawny-looking thing, obviously malnourished, and his knees were all scratched and banged up. He looked awfully badly treated, and he was shy. So shy! I asked him if he believed in God and he nodded, and that’s how I knew he was my son. He had a generic-looking face which ended up working in my favour really. He would barely speak to me on the way home, he just kept peeping out at me from under his fringe with these big terrified eyes. He was a love. I’d found him down south, you see, I wanted to give a child a whole new life a million miles away from their old one. So I’d been looking far away, you know. And Alex was the loveliest boy you could have imagined. Even after he’d been with me a while he didn’t have any friends around the neighbourhood, I guess it was hard for him, having lived in such terrible conditions and then suddenly being rescued by little old me. He didn’t know what to do with himself. I imagine it was like being whisked out of Hell and sent straight up to Heaven. For the first few months he barely spoke. He seemed very skittish really, and when he did speak he was forever asking after his mum. I’d tell him, “I’m your mum now, Alex,” and he’d cry and cry. I felt sorry for the poor thing. He’d had a hard life and didn’t know how to be thankful to me. I couldn’t blame him for that, though. These things take time. I home-schooled him for a bit. I thought it was for the best, him being so shy. School is a tough place for kids and it just didn’t seem like a good idea. I didn’t take him to church with me either. Alex should have been welcome in God’s house just as he was in my house, but it was the people I didn’t trust. You can’t trust anyone who thinks they’re acting in the name of God, and that’s what everyone at Church was like. They were people who had to bribe their way into Heaven and they‘d sell you up the river in a second. They weren’t special like me and Alex. They had to find big sins out in the world and expose them, they had to become heroes on earth to even make it to the gates. Me and Alex would be VIP. I love the lad. That’s why it hurt me so much when he tried to leave. I remember it was late. We’d watched the telly after tea and we’d done a bit more schoolwork and Alex was getting ready for bed while I did the washing up. I tucked him in like usual and we both went to sleep. Since Brian died I’d had trouble sleeping, so my doctor was prescribing me pills to help me sleep. By 10pm I was usually deaf to the world so I didn’t hear Alex banging at his bedroom door until the lock gave way, and I didn’t hear him creep downstairs…It was the crash of the back door’s window that woke me up and I ran downstairs swinging my bedside lamp, thinking we were getting burgled. I ran to the back door, which was still locked, but the glass window was smashed through and the big Bible was on the patio outside, surrounded by glass and I could just make out his these little feet scurrying over the fence into next door’s garden as he scrambled over the fence. I thought about chasing him but there wasn’t much point. I wouldn’t be able to find him before he found someone in the street. He could have knocked on next door’s and they would have let him in and sorted him out. And it didn’t help that his face had been all over the papers and the evening news for months now. Everyone in the country was out looking for him. So I picked up the Bible and I swept up the glass and I made myself a cup of tea and I sat down to watch some telly. It wasn’t even half an hour before the police turned up at the door. There was a lot of them and they kicked down the front door before I even had a chance to let them in. Two of them grabbed me and held me back, as if little old me was going to be a threat to them! There had to have been at least five of them, too many people, everyone was tearing around the house, ripping out my room and Alex’s room. I could hear them shouting things, talking about the lock on Alex’s bedroom door, his boarded-up window. I didn’t answer when they spoke to me, they were talking to me as if I was common criminal! “Me!” I said to them, “the only crime I’m guilty of is saving a poor child from his miserable existence. I’m one of God’s angels!” They asked me if that’s what I thought I’d been doing and that‘s what I was, and I said, “Thought! What do you mean, thought?!” The police are all the same. They’re the same as the people at the church, thinking they’re helping the world, thinking they’re doing something good. But they’re not, they’re not following God’s laws they’re following some made-up laws that people think are there to help them. It was an injustice to be held in my own home by these Devils, speaking to me like that and rough-housing me. I’m not a criminal. I haven’t done anything wrong. SHE IS QUIET FOR A SECOND, STARING DOWN AT THE CUP OF TEA AND FROWNING SLIGHTLY AS IF SHE IS STILL TRYING TO COMPREHEND WHAT HAPPENED. I thought maybe things would be different when they found his home-schooling work and his toys and the educational posters and pictures in his room. I thought maybe they’d understand how I’d saved Alex and how I’d never hurt him. They spoke to him and they spoke to me. Alex got sent to psychiatrists and psychologists who poked and prodded around in his head until they decided I hadn’t abused him. Abused him! As if I ever would. Then they got their hands on me. They analysed me and tested me and spent hours and hours with me, talking and questioning and wondering. They asked about Brian and my life. They asked about my hobbies and my friends. They asked about mental illness in my family. They asked about God, what He’d said to me and how often I saw Him. I told them just what I’ve told you, about how God told me to save Alex from certain death, certain death were His exact words, His exact words! And the woman, she had a face like a dog, she told me that Alex hadn’t been anywhere near certain death, and that he’d come from a loving home. She told me about his parents, who were lawyers, and how Alex was a bright kid who was going on for a great future. A great future! Well, she hadn’t seen him when I’d found him, with his knees banged up and him being so scrawny-looking. She gave me this sad look and shook her head and wrote something down on a piece of paper. Then they decided to lock me away like a crazy person, and send me to see you, twice a week, two hours a session, so you could unpick my brain some more and try and make me see what I did was wrong. But the problem there is that I haven’t done anything wrong and you can try and convince me otherwise but I’ll never believe you. I’m not sorry, I just want to see Alex. Can I see Alex? Will you take me to see Alex?