My novel is called T.O.T.S. and there has been few greater pleasures in my life than its completion. It would mean a lot if it were enjoyable to read not just to write, so here goes ...
T.O.T.S.
Prologue
Mr
Max Dempsey stooped half-heartedly at the lack of extraordinaire that
was his mass-produced, run-of-the-mill, corporately designed front
door. He scooped up his stack of bills identical to those of his next
door neighbour's, identical to those of their
next door neighbour's etc, etc, precisely similar concerning
all but the personal details gazing at him through the address
window. Visa, electric, gas, cable! Why do the Teenagers insist
upon that infernal television? he
thought. Telephone, mortgage, oh, what was this?
Max read the small type that
was in the corner of both the two the envelopes aloud “Department
of New Admissions … hmm. Two at once. That is unusual.”
He picked at the envelope
somewhat timidly, since he was not keen on the concept of caressing a
sheet of paper previously licked by a total stranger. He flipped open
the letters, holding them side by side as he compared them to each
other.
“Oh my,” he murmured,then,
“Jack!”
“Yeah,” was the reply from
somewhere in the lounge.
“How's your Telezapping
coming along?”
“Er … alright … why …?”
Chapter
1 – Inhabitants of the Streets and Their Ways
Callum
My parents sucked – well, I never even met my father, except upon
my first moment of existence – my mother then, I should say,
sucked. They were on the brink of discontinuing my existence entirely
but “mercifully” they released me into the world of teenage drug
addictions, teen pregnancies and more alcohol abuse than is
recommendable for a burly Scotsman. My mother was herself a prime
example of society's mockery.
My mother, like many, is subject to pin-hole viewing, even by me.
Every time my mother occurs to me as a disgrace of a human being, I
flip only my only words from my mother that have not traipsed out of
my memory. It is a scrap of jotter paper, the cover of a history
jotter in fact. It is the only window I have to my mother, other than
a photo of her that is not shrouded in unfair judgement. The jotter
indicates that upon the time of my birth she was a tenth-grader,
almost sixteen years ago. She, I'm sure, would have bowed out of
school, making way for the 'clever kids'.
Which, hey! I turned out to be one of. So 's not all bad!
Scrawled onto the non-personal-detail-marked face of the flimsy card
is a message. In pink gel pen.
I'm
sorry. I don't want this cycle to turn any more. I leave you with my
greatest idol : a smart-ass writer who has truck-loads of money to
spare. While us poor people have nothing. Stop, Sadie, she worked for
her money. What do I do? I skip school. How do I end up? Pregnant. I
happen to know from a discarded autobiography that your recipient can
never repeat my ill-thought deed. She deserves you more than me. And
so, I leave you like Oliver Twist, on the doorstep. And I hope you
get what you deserve, whether that be good or bad. I sure got what I
deserved. Let what you deserve be better than what you have.
P.S.
You're name is Callum.
After
forgiving my mother for her grammatical error, I set to work
forgiving the rest of her time with me. I cost her her dreams. How
can somebody blame me for something so huge, when my existence was so
minimal! I could almost forgive her for gifting me this burden had
her plan panned out. Yes, I got a loving mother, until I was three,
when said loving mother passed away, quietly and without any friends
or relatives to know. And so, for the last twelve years, I have been
cared for by a group of street boys, mostly ethnic, and slightly
unwilling to accept my Caucasian pastiness. I managed to coax
literacy into my brain and I am proud of having been kicked out of at
least ten libraries for loitering. I am an expert loiterer.
But every
time I blend too much into the streets, I grab what my mother wanted
– needed for me and flip it open, closed, back, forth. I know each
word as easily as I know my own name. The message too, not just the
details. The only four things I know about my mother : the name of
her history teacher, the school which she attended, her history class
number and her full name.
Sadie
Hannah Netherson
10H
History
Miss
Delany
Newark
High
And
somehow I ended up in Florida.
Anyway,
that's what I know for certain. Everything else I've told you could
easily be a madman's / Edgar Allen Poe character's ramblings.
So yeah,
welcome to DownDownDowntown Florida … I think it's now about time
that Suzie introduce herself.
Suzie
Mrs. Rutherford bustled hastily
around her husband's study , anxious to ensure his attendance at he
first Orlando Council meeting of twenty-twelve, while he adjusted his
cuffs and his belt, and made sure his tie was symmetrical along at
least twenty-three axes. After a thousand 'final preparations', they
exited their suburban Casa and left their fifteen-year-old daughter
glued to a commercial for a hyper-advanced, super awesome vacuum
cleaner.
Okay, so you may have gathered that
my family aren't exactly poor. My dad's running for governor of
Florida ; he's already highly authoritative in Orlando. In fact, he
is partially responsible for your ability to stoop over a water facet
at multiple locations dotted around the city's many theme parks! God,
he's lame. I, being the daughter of the refreshment God, have gone
through countless tests of the park's Youth Education Series
programmes.
Did you know the steepest drop on
Splash Mountain is only forty-five degrees? I have scooted up and
down the mountain so many times that I can grin at the moment the
camera flashes and I have on many occasions been tempted to traipse
through the scenery, plastic in hand, and prove that the drop is in
fact a hundredth of a degree off sheer.
Anyway, that's
an outsider's view of me, Callum and Jack's first view of me, even my
parents' view of me. There's only one man who always understood my
life through my eyes – and that's Max Dempsey.
I
had been at Space Camp that summer, where I had been de-gravitised
and disorientated by the three-sixty spinning machines that hurled
your guts against your stomach lining until the instructor finds it
prudent to stop the world from spinning. There was also a ladder-like
construction that reduced my monstrous – by teenage girl standards
– hundred and six pounds to roughly fifty-three. But none of the
astronauts training, not even the Hulk ride at Universal Islands of
Adventure could have prepared me for the phone call I received
February 2nd 2013.
“Holland
and Marshall divorce lawyers. Could I speak to a Mr. Rutherford,
please?”
“What?!”
I exclaimed, utterly incredulous.
“Mr.
Rutherford,” the lawyer insisted, “he called me about … well,
let's just say business. You wouldn't happen to be Sally, would you?”
“Suzie!”
“Ah,
yes, Suzie. Look, this is awkward enough as it is, howzabouts handing
the phone to your dad, poppet,” the lawyer continued.
If
he had been any more patronizing he would have been … my mother. I
guess I had been making an awful riot because I realised with a jolt
that both of my parents had appeared behind me, affording me a look
of concern about my social failings – this particular phone-call
not being my most graceful – which gradually degenerated into a
shifty gaze of utter guilt. Serves them right. They assure me every
night that they love me and that nothing can come between us – oh,
I see. They never once said they loved each other. About half of
those parties too must have been some sort of deceit. I mean, who
goes to twenty-something mundane and mentally challenging 'social
events' every month who isn't a sociopath trying to scale social
ladder? They must have been sneaking off somewhere to argue, I guess.
“Suzie,
dear,” my mother interjected, before my brain could accuse them of
anything worse, “we know this must be hard on you.”
“Damn
right! I have to hear that my two favourite people in the world –”
which is a lie. My favourite person in the world is my best friend,
Jake, “– have kept the biggest secret that they could possibly
keep from me and I have to find out from. A. Lawyer!”
“S-Suzie,”
my dad stammered, “I advise that you keep your voice down. We have
neighbours you know.”
We
had neighbours alright. I darted into their bedroom, tore open the
velvet drapes and threw up the shutter. I elbowed open the stiff
window and poked my head out the gap created. I opened my mouth to
yell but as I noticed my parents approaching, I abandoned my current
plan for one of escape.
I
heaved open the window even further and vaulted over the edge. I
gripped the windowsill's sandstone crumbliness as my feet landed on
the drainpipe below. I shimmied along the drainpipe until I reached
its conclusion, then grasped the fence at the house's edge and nimbly
shuffled down it, my parents gazing on in shock and – I like to
think – awe. I smirked and was glad my countless escapes after ten
pm curfew had paid off.
I
bolted, screaming “My parents are getting divorced. Divorced!”
I
zipped around the suburban estate, vaulting fences, walls and even
the occasional particularly sturdy hedge. At one point, I realised I
had a dog on my tail, whom I shook deftly off with a toss of a HARIBO
; that dog has always had the biggest sweet tooth.
I
had been running for perhaps twenty minutes when I finally looked
back. Wrong moment. I stumbled head-first into the side of an
adolescent. His mahogany hair stopped at his shoulders and had been
smoothed into something resembling style. His jacket was missing one
side of its collar, which was painfully obvious, even though it was
draped around his waist. His eyes were greyish-blue and
heart-throbbingly serious. His face was a complexion of serene pale
and he was about the height of that Scottish tennis player … Murray
something. He wore a mucky white t-shirt and skin-tight jeans that
stopped a little too much above his ankles, leaving a gap of skin
between his jeans and his fantastically red flip-flops. His hair was
the only thing even remotely civilized – dark blonde and down to
the nape of his neck.
He
shot into fighting position but I raised my arms in surrender.
“I'm
sorry. I'm trying to get away. Fast,” I muttered.
“Piece
of advice : go back.”
“What?”
“Streets.
Not. Fun.”
“Parents.
Bitches.”
He
went quiet and I figured I'd won.
“Go
back,” he insisted, the words scraping out of his mouth like a
tooth being removed, “Go back or I will personally make sure nobody
trades with you. I will personally carry you home if I have to.”
I
could not fathom the reason for his concern. I had never met him
before, never even seen him. But I obliged, with the agreement that I
would not be forced to return until tonight. It was four in the
afternoon. Awesome. He agreed and kept his promise for half an hour,
until his conscience ruptured and he ordered me home.
“Fine!”
I huffed.
And
that was the end of my running away.
Callum
It
was 3rd February 2013 when I met Max. I had been loitering
in Disneyland, after sneaking into the Magic Kingdom only minutes
after opening hours. I have this spot, just behind the Pirates of the
Caribbean ride where I've knocked out some of the bricks to create a
ladder. I always go on Splash Mountain first, so that I'm as
unrecognisable as possible in case anyone's suspicious of the
fifteen-year-old who randomly appears in the middle of Frontierland.
After
successfully drenching myself, I wandered around other parts of the
park, trying not to allow much of a stir with my immediate migration
to Space Mountain. This was my favourite ride for two reasons. 1, I
had an ex-street-boy-friend who had scored a job working the queues.
2, it's freakin' awesome. Eddie, my friend who claimed 'big things'
to be gradually edging towards his life, would assure his co-workers
that I had a job at an external firm to test a ride's quality daily,
hourly, by the minute. He said I was the premium guinea pig of the
theme park world.
Pah!
Like anyone believed him!
It
didn't matter though because apparently I was not the only of my kind
sauntering around the Kingdom and apparently we'd basically all have
to whip out sleeping bags and set up camp for the authorities to have
any claim to investigate us. Luckily, I appear far older than my true
age, so at least the story's plausible. I was content to keep up the
pretence, if only for formalities, since it granted me “contractual”
access to a continuous stream of rides on various roller-coasters and
drop towers.
It
was on my twenty-somethingth hurl around Space Mountain
that Max graced me with his ominous presence. He surprisingly
elegantly swept into the seat behind me, and as I twisted around to
instruct Eddie to set it on super-speed, our favourite way of
terrifying the eight-year-olds aboard, I noticed that the intense
stare of the guy behind me was trained on the gaping hole of no
return.
“Worried
about the worm-holes?” I teased, my own roller-coaster qualms
having been extinguished long ago, “Hey, Eddie! Best set it on
toddler-speed for this guy!”
“Sure
thing, Callum!” he piped back.
The
guy's eyebrows shot upwards, as if they were repulsed by his cool
blue irises. I know I was. Then they sunk back down as if gravity
were dragging them and he relaxed into his cushion infected pod with
a charismatic grin. I hoped he got sucked down a mile long worm-hole
that only emerged onto four inches of space before plunging into a
black hole.
Throughout
the ride, I could practically hear two pupil shaped holes being
lasered into my skull and I knew the only explanation could be the
charming swot sat behind me. When the ride ended, he sidled to my
side on the moving walkway / green-screen travelator and began the
awkward conversation that people call small-talk. Fair enough. Lone
tourist. Bored of having no-one to share his holiday adventures with.
It was no surprise, therefore to note his extreme Scottish accent.
“Fancy
a job?” he blurted.
“What?!”
“Cut
the crap. We both know what you tell your little ride coordinater
friend is utter bull. Fancy a real job?”
“As
what … ?”
“Children's
entertainer. There's an opening as one of the pre-show entertainers
for Fantasmic. You seem to have a bit of a knack for entertaining the
'wee yins'” his compliment felt back-handed, as if he meant
something else but I couldn't afford to pass up any job, no matter
how suspicious the circumstances.
He
listed my hours, which were generous, though not as generous as my
pay and I couldn't shake the feeling of entrapment, a trap without an
escape for to turn down a job would be almost suicide. I HAD TO HAVE
THIS JOB. I accepted and he asked if I could start tonight. I
immediately agreed since rehearsing would give me purpose for the
rest of the day. I had many, many lines to learn.
That
night, as the darkness flooded the Fantasmic arena with that tense
atmosphere that gives off an audible buzz of excitement. I knew why.
I'd been hanging around Disneyland for long enough to catch the show
a couple of times. If my previous encounters with the Magic was
anything to go by, roughly seven eighths of this audience was about
to remove their social status from their minds and scream phrases
like 'Go Mickey' until their voices deserted them. I grinned, for
once feeling involved in the hype that always precedes the show. I
headed towards my co-crowd-warmer, Cameron.
“I've
seen you 'round the park. You one of those homeless kids?” he
whispered, as we were alarmingly close to the front row of the crowd,
“You ain't as dark as them. I always assumed they were a family.”
“Some
of them are. They took me in when I was three,” the absurdity of
divulging the details of my slightly illegal early childhood to a
complete stranger suddenly dawned on me.
“Aaron
still there?”
I
was taken aback “Who?”
“Never
mind. He got me this job a few years ago, got himself fired a few
days later and then ended up back on the streets. I was gonna try and
get him Jack's job when he quit but Max was determined he had
someone.”
“Oh.
I'm sorry,” stealing a job is basically a capital offence with most
of those boys.
“Nah.
It's fine. Probably wouldn't even let him back in here after what he
did.”
“What'd
he do?”
“No
idea. Musta been pretty big though, 'cause they didn't even give'm a
warning.”
“So
did you start with the street boys?”
“Age
eight to sixteen,” he said with a smirk.
The
lights blinked out and the spotlights searched the crowd for a moment
before settling one each on us. I had always found stage fright
incomprehensible but now, with all eyes on Cameron and I, I felt
multitudes of sympathy towards those who pass out during TV singing
contests. Cameron started off the tirade of fruity lines and when he
turned to me for a reply, purplish dots emanated from the centre of
my vision, before my entire vision had turned a deep shade of violet.
I
stalled for a few moments with a drawn out “Welllll, Ca-me-ron …
”
He
subtly mouthed my reply and I duplicated it but with volume “I too
am very excited about the show coming up. Why don't we see if all the
ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls are too?”
“Sure
thing, Callum!”
We
dived into the bleachers that held the audience, him taking the
front, being more experienced and far more comfortable under the
constant glare of the audience and me taking the back few rows. After
introducing many young children who adored various Disney Princesses
and wouldn't stop riding the 'Tower of Terror', much to 'Cameron's
and I's extreme surprise', we began the music competition between the
two sides of the audience. I've never heard any song from 'Grease'
sung so voluminously and enthusiastically. I took the obedience of
the crowd to play along with our 'It's a draw' routine as a good sign
and began to relax. I've always wondered where life would have taken
me had the crowd been just a quarter of a decibel lower and I hadn't
let my guard crumble to the ground.
We
were close to gone, too. We were about thirty seconds away from
welcoming Mickey when they began to flock like vulture's around us. I
was chilling with the back of the crowd or 'my team' when I saw the
colour drain from the faces of those watching me. I glanced at
Cameron and knew with absolute certainty that there was a collection
of horror movie psychopaths huddled behind me.
I
swivelled around, trying to prolong the moment where my fears would
be confirmed. They very nearly were. What I saw behind me resembled a
man. I think. He was perhaps a foot taller than me and most of
that was made of head. His chin stretched from his chest to half a
foot above his shoulders and he had feather like strands of black
hair protruding from the top. The entire head reached a maximum
diameter of six fingers wide and featured a Dobby-like crooked,
pointed nose that protruded from between its ears, which were at the
head's very centre. All I noticed of the remaining sixty per cent of
his body was a flash of black robes as they lunged at me.
“Oof!”
I muttered, feeling a tug on my neck.
I
writhed towards my collar, suspecting a second attacker trying to
drag me down the stairs but as I realised that my feet were in fact
planted firmly on the ground, I also noticed that I was sitting on
the lap of a very exasperated Muslim woman. I gathered myself up and
began to apologize with deep profoundness, while adjusting my vision
to the scene developing like a moving portrait in front of me.
Panic.
That's what was in front of me. The thousands of crammed in tourists
were exhibiting their own forms of the emotion. Anyone below the age
of eleven cried, while everyone else consoled the frightened
children. I was hesitant to rejoin the action, feeling somewhat
relieved to have been removed but I figured I was being paid for the
first time in my life, I could hardly complain about certain
activities not being included in the job description.
“Everybody
OUT!” I bellowed.
Cameron
presumably agreed because moments later I heard him cry out “MOVE!”
I
began shepherding the tourists out of the tourists out of the
deformed-head-infested arena. The heads in question, which turned out
to belong to a body each – what a surprise! – were expertly
sifting through the crowd, by repeating much of the same collar tug
as they had inflicted upon me, knocking many of them unconscious as
they hurled the audience into disarray. What the hell were they
looking for? I thought.
I
located one of the rare and scattered calm tourists, handing him the
flash-light they give you with the entertainer's uniform so that you
can see when you're walking around before the spotlight's turned on,
with strict orders to “Get them OUT!” The boy, a teenager of
maybe fourteen or fifteen nodded roughly and grabbed the flash-light.
I bounded down the stairs to the middle ring of bleachers which were
still loaded with confusion and panic, since many of them were
cowering around the unconscious bodies or, I imagined with intense
dread, corpses. Who could be evil enough to commit murder in
DISNEYLAND?! I demanded of the world with a raging fury. If there
is a God, which I highly doubt, I fail to understand why he would
create such vile abominations with His almighty power and not even
attempt to intervene as they destroyed His other creations.
“Why,”
I muttered, then cursed because I wasn't exactly intervening either.
I
knew it would be hard to wrench the warm bodies from the cold but I
also doubted they wished to create more cold ones so I did not expect
anywhere near the resistance I encountered. There were about seventy
Big-Heads, advancing from the top rows of bleachers and from the
bottom. By now the show had started, and concluded. When the actors
had caught a glimpse of the scene before them, many had swum over to
help, while the rest had taken the long way around to fetch mass
assistance – fire trucks and police vehicles and the like. Those
actors unfortunately were still in the process of this and the rest
had followed the crowd into the main park, attempting to establish
some sort of order. Frankly, I wished they would return and leave
that duty-minded adolescent to it. Nevertheless, I estimated about
one and a half-thousand left to evacuate the amphitheatre. At twenty
seconds per family with an average family size of four members, I
calculated that I was not looking forward to this. What I wouldn't
give for myself and all these families to be somehow transported
somewhere else, anywhere else.
It
was therefore to my extreme surprise that somehow I blinked and was
standing under the oversized magic hat at the centre of the park. I
was surrounded by the entire contents of the amphitheatre’s
audience, minus the Big-Heads but plus a few rather startled tourists
who evidently had not heard the screaming – or more probably were
stunned by the sudden apparition of a howling huddle of panicked
fellow tourists. And I was exhausted … which made sense, since I
had been bounding around the amphitheatre like a maniac. But it was a
much greater exhaustion than it should have been. God, I'm not that
unfit, am I?
The
park was a gloomy sort of dark, with clouds shrouding the stars and
in the process extinguishing our only hope at a lighted way. Some of
the actors had run ahead and, seemingly not put off by our sudden
teleportation, were calmly distributing glowing lightsabers around
the other members of staff. I heard mutters that the police had
arrived but that we were to evacuate the entire park due to a high
terrorist alert. Somehow I doubt that a band of deformed men who had
neither set of a bomb nor seized any of the tourists that they
knocked unconscious for a hostage but had instead rifled through the
crowd in a desperate search for a mystery object, were ruthless
terrorists seeking to destroy the security system of one of the most
high profile countries in the world. If this was what they were
calming the tourists with, then how bad must the real situation be?
I
read in a newspaper a few days later that the only casualties were
confined to the amphitheatre but I wasn't to witness these events
first hand. I felt a slight jolt with this teleportation, as if
someone had slapped me in the back to remove a piece of food from my
throat. I was now in a room. A depressing room. The room was large
and cluttered with teenagers milling around. It had a hardwood floor
and a plasterboard ceiling, matching the plasterboard walls. There
was the most nonsensical collection of random items I've seen in my
life : a car engine, an analogue clock, a computer and a foldaway
table with a collection of watches on it.
My
view of the room was soon obstructed by a face. As the face came
hazily into focus, I cried out.
“Ah!”
I yelled, “You're the guy who got me the job earlier! Are you
kidnapping me or something?! I knew I shouldn't have trusted you!”
“Don't
worry, don't worry,” he rushed, “All will be explained. This is
T.O.T.S – Training Of Teenage Sorcerers. Don't give me the
goggle-eye routine. I've got your admissions letter if you don't
believe me about your abilities and as for not believing in sorcery …
Jack!”
I
ducked to avoid a paper aeroplane, feeling mightily insulted. I
regained my composure, only to realise that the plane was still
hovering only inches from my nose. I moved to the right. It followed.
To the left. It followed. I couldn't escape the clutches of the
paper! I smacked my head. Doh! Why was I trying to escape? I reached
out and crushed it in my palm.
“Yeah,”
a voice I couldn't place called, “that's why I usually use darts.”
“Thankyou,
Jack,” the man called back.
“No
problem!”
A
boy, whom I assumed was Jack sauntered towards us with a grin.
“You
the one who took my old job?” he asked.
I
hesitated.
“Oh,
it's fine. I don't need it any more. T.O.T.S pays for everything.”
“Oh,
then yeah.”
“Alright,
bonding time over. Jack, back to work.”
Jack's
face turned murky for a moment, then he brightened and resumed his
arrogant gait as he returned to the back of the room.
“So
how do you know I can do that?Are the tourists okay? Who were those
Big-Heads? How did I get here?” the questions poured out of me like
blood out of a sucker-punched nose and I chuckled in apology.
“No,
no. It's fine. Answers as follows : yes, I think so, they're called
the Hondarians – I'll explain later, by sorcery. Any more?”
“That's
fine for now.”
“There
may be something obvious you're missing. I'll answer it anyway. My
name's Max Dempsey. Officially, you're meant to address me like a
teacher but everyone just calls me D. I gave up on that battle a long
time ago.”
D
– a stupid name – lead me through a labyrinth of corridors to a
drab, grey door but I couldn't have been more excited about it. It
had a name card with my name on it! Callum Netherson! White
characters deeply engraved onto dark blue perspex. I had a room! I
hadn't had my own room since age three! I forgave D for his
ridiculous name and had to deeply restrain myself from bear-hugging
him. I think he noticed the insane twinkle in my eye because he
pointed his eyes to the doorknob and nodded.
I
burst into my room – my room! I haven't been able to say that
phrase in over twelve years – with the most monstrous bundle of
pride and elation I've ever carried. I flopped onto the white unmade
sheets of my bed – my bed! – and flapped shut my eyes. I had a
home.
“Thankyou!”
I murmured, before I continued with my flapping shut, continuing
first with my brain, after all I was very, very tired.
