The Whole 'October Story'

He shrugged the brightly patterned shirt on over his watermelon-sized head. Cycle helmets, caps and beanies had always sat ridiculously upon this sphere, now, with both arms stuck up in the air and the shirt’s top button wedged up his left nostril, a ludicrous panic set in.

It wasn’t the sort of panic that beaded sweat, or made him shake. It was an old fear, one that filled his mouth with saliva and brought the memory of a stale smell like a smog swarming around his senses. He pulled the shirt firmly down and tried to breathe.?

Sucking air deep into his lungs now, he couldn't shake the thought of having to step outside and face the world. Yet another dreary overcast day, filled with the stench of pin-striped suits shuffling past his front door.??Frank cast his mind back to when it all began. He was eight and he'd been exploring the area surrounding his uncle's farm in Nelson. Down by the beach he'd rounded a corner and come across a sizeable cave. There were clothes drying on boulders in front in the sun. Some one lived there. Frank couldn't resist the urge to see what was inside. A nestlike bed, table, various cans of food, and a wooden chest. He looked around to see if anyone was about. No one. He opened the chest, imagining rubies and gold coins. All that was there was a necklace made of bones, a pocket knife, some ancient photos, a book, and a gold pocket-watch. The gold glinted in the summer sunlight. He lifted the watch out and clicked it open.

All of a sudden there was an eardrum-splitting screech from behind him. He turned around to see an old woman with dread-locked grey hair, dressed in black robes and holding a bone-white staff.

"You dare steal from an old woman? You shall pay the price!" With one sweep of her staff through the air an a few muttered foreign words, a flash of green light struck Frank with a force that knocked him to the ground.??

Sand is insidious stuff. In his nose and eyes and ears, it crept in and tried to choke him. He huffed out, looking for breath, sight, sound. But there was nothing. He was in a world of sand, everything beige and gritty. Until behind the hiss he heard the old woman muttering.??

"I hate it when I get sand on my watermelon, at the beach," she'd grumbled.

“I'm not a watermelon!" Frank had squeaked that dull day down on the beach. He'd leapt up, away from her looming fruit knife, her eyes round with thirst for the mouthwatering fruit. He'd realised then the dangers of being different.??

His friends never mentioned it. They were too polite. But he'd seen that look in their eyes too, echoes of that lady down on the beach all those years ago. He sucked in a mouthful of air and stepped out the front door...??

At that moment Frank regained consciousness. Alice and her hovering fruit knife had vanished into the ether, leaving him with only a throbbing lump on his left temple for company. Frank sat up slowly and looked around. 'Where am I?' he wondered. 'Where the hell am I?'??

As he stepped out into the cool air of yet another rushed Monday morning he rubbed his temple, as if the lump were still there even after all these years. He joined the throng of suits, acutely aware that he didn’t blend in at all, yet happy enough to be part of the charade. The memory of that day at the beach stayed with him until he reached the door to his office, completely unaware of what had passed him by on his way to work.??

He hadn't been looking for anything in particular though, and something so subtly different would have been easy to miss for anyone. What Frank did notice was that there was something unusual about the room he walked into. The first thing he noticed was the odd smell (was it violets?) pervading the room. He sat down at his desk and regarded the scene in front of him. Pens, computer, diary – all present and accounted for. His eyes flicked to the picture of the two of them, but in confusion it dawned on him that it wasn't the scene he'd expected to see. Certainly there were two smiling faces in the frame. But he could only recognise the younger version of himself. Who was that with him? He had his arm around her in a way that suggested a familiar intimacy that he did not register for the woman.??

"Excuse me, John?" His secretary, Kelly peered in the door at him. Now Frank was really confused. What the hell was going on? She was looking at him expectantly. "John?" she looked at him as if to ask if he was alright. Clearly he, or something, was not.??

The corners of the room sloped ever so slightly, and there was a strange smell wafting from the direction of a pot plant on a stand in the corner. He had been to this place almost every day since he moved to the city, yet he felt that something had changed.??

The photo, the smell of the room, the name that was not his – everything in that moment made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Kelly cleared her throat, sending Frank’s assortment of thoughts tumbling to the floor like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “Just a reminder that you’re meeting with Valerie in 15 minutes. And... I’m sorry... but your shirt is on inside-out”. ??Frank looked down to see the faint stripes and raw seams of his shirt, and then turned his eyes sheepishly back to the doorway, but Kelly was gone. As he undid the top button and pulled the shirt over his head, his mind boggled. Was her name even Kelly?, he wondered. And who the heck was Valerie???

‘John?’ Kelly asked again.??‘Er, yes, Kelly, I’m fine, fine. What is it?’????

‘Wellll…’ Kelly moved slowly into Frank’s office and closed the door behind her with a firm click. ‘I spent quite a lot of the weekend thinking about what you said on Friday afternoon and, well, I just wanted you to know that’– Kelly lifted her eyes and looked Frank in the eye – ‘if you really meant what you said, then I’m in. You did mean it, didn’t you?’ she said coyly, twisting a strand of her long, dark hair around her left thumb.

‘Err, um,’ Frank swallowed nervously ‘yes, well, about that. I’ve not been feeling too well actually, terribly busy all weekend and I’m just a tiny bit hazy about Friday. Could you just…’????

The force of the door crashing open was enough to knock the pot plant off its stand and onto the cracked lino floor.

‘How dare you, John? How dare you?’ shrieked the red-haired stranger in the doorway as red viscous liquid oozed out of the broken pot…

His knees shook, his ears rang as he blurted out ‘Yes, it was me! Me…!’ The relief in getting this out caused all his leg muscles to relax and he collapsed to the floor.??

As his eyes gradually refocused he could see the ankles of the woman from this position and, as in very stressful conditions, he wondered at the small tattoo on the inside of her left ankle…

Where had he seen that tattoo before? Of course! The old witch who had cast a spell on him when he was a boy! He strained his memory hard and could see in his mind, as he collapsed on the beach all those years ago, the old witch had the same tattoo on her ankle! Some kind of ancient rune...

He checked himself. He need no longer delve into the past. It stood tall and red-haired before him. Was this friend or foe; were these the legs, that tattoo, of an angel or demon?

The red-head dangled a familiar gold pocket-watch before Frank's eyes as he looked up from his hands and knees on the floor.?

"Looking for this?" she asked. "You should always be careful what you wish for... or what you try to steal!" As she uttered this the red-head pulled off what apparently was a wig, to reveal a mass of thick, grey dreadlocks. ?"Been confused lately, have we?" She asked the small, large-headed man on the floor.?

"Yes" he said, "Who am I? ...Where am I?"?

"A more apt question might be 'WHEN are you?' You should know this watch is a magic one. It has the power to send people through time. Alice, Valerie, John, Kelly, the funny smell in the office, the bizarre apparition that passed you on the street this morning - even your giant head - are all from alternate realities. Another question might be, 'Which is the real reality? And which will you choose?... I will give you one more chance to make things right."

With these words the witch cackled some unintelligible babble one more time, rotating her staff above her head then pointing it straight at Frank. A blue light blinded him and a cracking noise filled the air. He felt like he was spinning through an empty void.?

"If only I'd never entered that cave. Never opened that chest..." He moaned wistfully.?

Blackness.

Frank opened his eyes. He was lying on a beach. It was the beach by his uncle's farm. He was a kid again. The hot sun was beating down on him and he was wearing a woollen jersey. He pulled it off. Something was different. The jersey came off so easily! He felt his head with his hands and saw his shadow on the sand. His head was normal sized again! He turned around to see a cave behind him. Clothes outside it flapping in the breeze. It all seemed familiar to him. 'What was inside the cave?' he wondered.

"Probably nothing" he said, shaking his fuzzy head. Suddenly he had an urge to run back to the farmhouse to see what his aunty had made for lunch. He was ravenous. "I'm so hungry I could eat anything!"

'...Except watermelon' he thought. For some reason he had an irrational aversion to watermelon. And he skipped off back to the house over the fields, with the weight of the world no longer resting on his shoulders.