Stories written for BBC Radio Kent Competitions (1): Odd Dream

I was prepared to listen to her advice about the cheese, but why was she dressed as Joan of Arc?  Mum’s normally more conservative as a dresser.  Plain knitwear, skirts, shirts and petticoats; that sort of thing.  And she is far too Conservative to support women, or anyone for that matter, rising up as Joan did all those years ago and upsetting the status quo. 

And why was her hearing aid melting?  We were standing by a fridge in a supermarket and I was freezing.  She was telling me in her nasal tones about the right time of the day to eat cheese but the outfit was confusing me so much that I excused myself and turned away to shop. 

Still a little confused, I wandered further up the fridge section and saw my old headmistress, and chief tormentor on the playing fields, being upturned into the yoghurts.  I smiled as she stood up, the various shades of white dripping down the suit that she’d always seemed so proud of.  The smug grin she used to carry with her had been wiped clean off her face. 

Beyond her I saw William by the meat counter and he was crying.  I went over to see what was wrong and noticed he had a big pointy something in his side.  Oddly, the meat counter made me feel guilty, so I led William away before asking him what was wrong. 

“Why can’t my parents accept my sexuality?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I told him, “But sometimes we have to talk to people we don’t see eye to eye with.” 

I then suggested that shoplifting might cheer him up.  I took a sponge and he stole a rusty spanner but, alas, we were seen. 

As we legged it from security, an army of shoplifters joined us and we fought back, aiming to take over the supermarket.  William and I were generals and we fought side by side with our stolen goods as weapons until he turned into my first boyfriend and we were kissing under the iron bridge.  But it didn’t feel right; I preferred Glenn, wanted to be seen in the back of his car and make love on its cold leather seats so I could die with a smile on my face.  Glenn never knew, though,  because I never even told him how I felt, never went up to his house to inform him.  And now it was too late.

I decided to drown my sorrows down the pub.  I drank ale with Antony and Cleopatra, discussing the sizes of girls, just what would be enough to make Caligula blush and why he supposed my mother was dressed as Joan of Arc.  He didn‘t know who Joan was, though.  I gave Antony a look of disgust at his ignorance and left.  Instead of drink, I tried to forget Glenn through charity work (more specifically, making cards with the mentally ill) but I couldn’t help bursting into tears every so often. 

One night, though, a tattooed boy from Birkenhead opened my eyes, showed me love was insane and unnatural for people such as us anyway.  He took me to a cemetery and we had a discussion about Keats, Yeats and Oscar Wilde until my old reverend came by wearing a tutu and doing ballet.  I paid him no heed, though: he’d always told me to treat others as you would yourself. 

Then I was at a fairground on its last night; on the whirling waltzer with Sheila.  She told me she’d met a charming man without a stitch to wear.  His name was written on her arm in biro. 

We flew off into the night and landed in daytime in the old grey school playground.  Everyone from work was there.  Andy and Mike had played a joke on Johnny and Stephen.  Somehow I knew what the joke was and told them it was a horrid joke to play- far too close to the bone- just plain nasty- only played by children. 

I chased them away and took Johnny and Stephen to see the Queen.  We ran at her with the sponge and rusty spanner from the supermarket before putting her head in a sling and dropping our trousers to her.  What sensible children we were! 

Then Johnny disappeared and me and Stephen went to the disco.  At the disco, Stephen had a dancing competition with another man and danced him to death.  We felt bad and left once Stephen gave an interview to the Belgian press (“You have to please them,” he explained). 

We were lovers now, dressed in rags, strolling down the street, the sun shining out of our behinds.  It was great- he was somebody who loved me for sure.  But it all went wrong. 

On a Friday night, he tried to become a protest singer.  He thought all you needed was an acoustic guitar, and so it all went horribly wrong and we were chased out of the building.  “We’ll smile about this later,” he said as we got to the road and a ten tonne truck mowed me down.  As they wheeled me into outpatients I fell into a coma. 

A montage showed Stephen waiting by my side for days and weeks and months; crying, getting angry and feeling drained and useless.  In a dream sequence, soil rained down on me, covering me.  It was awful, I could really feel it.  I called out to my mother to help me but it just kept on falling. 

It all got sadder and sadder and I tossed and turned until Morrissey appeared, told Stephen it would be OK and started to shake me, telling me my alarm had gone off so I had better wake up.

When I came round my alarm was going beserk.  I sat up and hit the snooze button just in case I fell back to sleep. 

The Smiths’ back catalogue was still playing on random repeat all and the cheese had started to turn.

Note: when trying to find a link to the competition pages, I instead found other stories starting with the same line, presumably written for the same competition.