Selected Tales from
MORPHEUS DESCENDING
Julie Balloo

WOODS

I went down there again: after all those years I went back to the woods. It took longer than I remembered; my feet hurt, and my high-heeled boots were far too impractical for such an enterprise.

What had started off as a sunny day had turned to a dismal grey. As I strode further through the forest toward the glade, the blue sky seemed distant. Bare branches, crooked and waving, struck terrifying poses along the way.

I was suddenly Snow White running for my life, unknowingly toward the wicked queen. It was getting late and I knew I'd soon be missed just like I had been all those years ago. No one believed me then when I tried to tell them what had happened, what I'd seen.

“You're a liar!” they said. “Now tell us where you really were?”

Thirty years had passed and I was drawn back into the dark shadows, my very own personal quest. I had something to prove, to myself if no one else.

My heart beat faster as I approached the clearing in the woods. Suddenly everything was familiar. My breathing quickened. Half of me wanted to see them again, the other half quietly dreaded it.

As I got closer I recognised the big chestnut tree, bronze conkers dangling like dull Christmas baubles and look—there—engraved on the wizened bark, my initials—proof—proof that I had been here.

Then I heard a noise, a slight rustling of leaves, then that familiar low murmur. I froze in fear and stood deathly still. I could hear the laughter, soft at first then louder—how many were there this time?

I saw them before they saw me. They had made a perfect circle just as I remembered. Offerings were laid out before them, bread, cheese, wine, cakes, and oranges. I was right all along—I knew I hadn’t made it up.

It's true what they say:

Today is the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

MEMORIES

“Oh please wear them, for me, go on.”

“I don’t want to,” she said, crossing her arms in a gesture she knew would have little or no effect. “They’re hideously uncomfortable and besides they’re so old.”

“But I love seeing you in them darling, you know what I mean.”

Oh here we bloody go she thought, the orders, the controlling, and the bullying, how much more could she take. But instead of standing up to him, she simply shrugged and said, “But they’re so out of fashion, people will laugh at me.”

Her husband of over forty years shook his head, that smug patronizing grin she’d become accustomed to never once leaving his face.

“Nonsense, classics never date. I should know.”

Naturally, she thought. Bloody typical, all these years there’s been three of them in this marriage, him, her and his ego.

She tried another tack.

“I’ve put on weight over the years darling. I’ve spread. They’re too tight.”

“Nonsense, they fit you like a glove. I can testify to that remember?”

Everyone had been so thrilled when they finally wed. A fairy tale union, they exclaimed. Talk about a happily ever after ending. They’ll last the course. Oh, if anyone can make it work that pair can.

And look at them now, nudging toward their golden anniversary, never a bad word uttered, never an argument slept on, just a cold creeping resentment steadily growing, seeping through their lives like a dirty great stain.

“Please wear them tonight darling. It takes me back to when we first met. Please do that for me, go on, just this once.”

Even though she’d long hardened her heart to him she nodded, giving in finally.

“Allow me,” he said, bending down on one leg and gently, ever so gently, placing the shoes on her feet, squeezing her pitiful bunions hard against the glass then not even noticing when she winced in pain.

“There you go, my princess. My, my—you make me feel like a young man again!”

Bastard, she thought, smiling sweetly, you bastard.

SICK

The old woman lay groaning, her deathly purring punctuated by short rasping gasps. How had this happened? Even the doctors were shocked. She was so healthy for her age, a regular bingo player and partaker of grilled lamb chops with baked beans or frozen vegetables. Her only vice, it seemed, a weekly port and lemon.

Now what a dreadful specimen of human decay lay before them, bloated, unrecognisable, a monstrosity. The medical world had seen tumours before, some so large that after removal from the patient they had to be wheeled away. But no one had ever seen anything quite like this.

“Will she die?” whispered a nurse.

“Perhaps,” said a doctor shaking his head in bewilderment. “It’s such a mystery.”

The nervous nurse nodded in agreement, barely able to look at the old woman yet drawn magnetically to her side.

“I suppose we’ll never know?”

“What?” queried the doctor.

“Why she swallowed the fly in the first place?”

LAWSUIT

“Well Edith, I think we've got a case.”

“Are you sure? It's never been done before.” The gentleman leant forward over his desk and gently gripped Edith’s hand.

“We shall be the first to successfully sue the royal family, trust me.”

Edith looked into his eyes and saw there a kindness she’d never come across in all her working life. She wanted him to help her and she needed him to believe her story.

“And you me sir. I never would have took that job if I'd known it was so dangerous.”

He offered her a clean lace handkerchief to catch the tears that could no longer be held back.

“I mean I'm a hard worker, I am. Sir don't get me wrong. It weren't the task that bothered me, but the working conditions.”

She mopped her eyes but stopped short of blowing her nose.

“You mean you could have been warned?”

“Yes.”

The fine gentleman made notes as she spoke, and she noticed how exquisite his handwriting was, all loops and curls and neat little characters. If only she could write, she thought, then she wouldn’t be in this predicament, she’d have had a proper job, one with a future, indoors where she would have been safe.

“You feel you should have been given protection?”

“Exactly.” She nodded.

“You could have been provided with special gear, a face mask for instance and a helmet.”

“I would have needed a blinking suit of armour, sir. I’m sorry, I do beg your pardon.”

Edith blushed and turned away.

“Would you say your life has changed irreparably?”

“Oh yes, it’s awful. Kiddies point and laugh. I know they can't help it, but the adults smirk or look away in disgust.”

“I'm so sorry.” He made a point of looking straight at her face and smiled.

“And this thing I have to wear. I know it’s temporary until I have surgery, but it's so uncomfortable, the way it cuts into the back of my neck and it looks so false.”

She was crying again.

“I'm a freak, hideous—and I can't even smell roses anymore.” She sobbed.

“There, there, don't worry about that now. You know who you are and I want you to know I'm on your side.”

“Thank you, sir. You're a good man, you are.”

“Right, now let's go through it all again, you were pegging out the royal households clothes and down came a blackbird and pecked off your nose?”

“Yes, yes, that's about right, sir.”

TRUE

My husband and I do not get on. It’s my fault I fear—our whole married life has been built on a lie. See him sneer at me. He loathes me, detests me but he can't understand why. How did this happen, he wonders. How is it possible? What went wrong?

I decided to come clean—after all we are both imprisoned in this hell of togetherness—perhaps now I can provide a key.

“We're not compatible, never were,” I say, thrusting my face into his, our mutual hatred locking horns in a frozen moment of fury.

He shakes his head, still unbelieving.

“No,” he whines, that pathetic nasal voice unleashing in me years of bitterness kept curdling in a deep pit of time.

He insists, “We are meant to be together, we proved that, we're a unit, we just have to try harder.”

I laugh, throw my head back and let out the most unladylike guffaw.

“You bloody fool!” I scream.

He looks hurt, pained, so confused.

“It was a trick.”

“What?” He folds his arms across his body, gently pressing against his belly, in a futile gesture so reminiscent of someone searching for their umbilical cord, which of course he is.

“I heard you and your bloody mother talking, plotting. I hid in the next room. I knew the plan!” I shout, exalted at speaking the truth at last.

“What?” is all he can manage again.

“You heard—I never felt that fucking pea.”

“Oh dear,” he mutters as I hurl my crown across the room and it smashes against the door.

GRAN

How unwell she looked, drawn and aged, not herself at all. I was ashamed I'd left it so long between visits. It's not as if I was that busy, really. It was just so far to go. But Gran loved the country—she was so content there all on her own, self sufficient in her picturesque cottage, her nearest neighbours a quarter of a mile away. I didn't really know what to say or where to begin, I commented on her looks. She took offence, I felt, and fixed me with a terrifying glare. I stood nervously by her bed wondering if I should go when suddenly she made a remark so totally out of character that I knew something was very wrong.

“All the better to eat you with my dear.”

Thankfully she kept a shotgun behind the door and I lived to tell the tale, but in my opinion (for what it's worth), give me the city any day.

© Julie Baloo

Julie Balloo trained as a dancer and actress and when those combined careers didn't pan out she took to the boards as a stand-up comic. She has written plays and scripts for theatre and radio and television that have been broadcast. She now lives in Hackney in London and spends every day looking beyond discarded condoms and dog shit in the hope of finding orchids.

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