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“You always have to make a drama out of everything,” Curt says, following it up with a wolfy belly laugh.
Curt? I try to speak, but I can’t hear my voice.
There’s a growl, followed by a bark. A wet, leathery tongue licks my cheek. I love that wolf. A sharp, high pitched woof pierces my eardrum and I wince. Something’s wrong. That doesn’t sound like my wolf. Or any wolf.
“Curt,” I croak, my mouth so dry, I can barely prise my lips apart.
“You’re not dead,” someone states from the far end of a long tunnel.
It’s so dark. I think my eyes are closed. I feel my eyelids flutter before they finally open. A pair of black eyes stare at me down a long nose. For a moment, my heart believes he’s my wolf, but my mind knows better. A chocolate brown dachshund in a glittery coat stands on my arm. He licks my face again, before a man yanks on a diamante chain, commanding, “Fluffy, come away. You don’t know what she’s got.”
A frowning face fades in and out of focus and disappears down that tunnel.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice is female this time. I feel a sharp pain in my right eye as the lid’s pulled open and subjected to a searing light. I turn my head away and hear myself moan.
“Has she taken something?” the woman asks.
“How would I know?” the cross man with the yapping Fluffy replies.
“What’s her name?”
“No idea. I don’t know her. Can I go now? I’d like to give Fluffy her last Christmas present. She’s been very patient. Haven’t you, Fluffy?”
My cheek lies in the mud, so I see four short legs and two long ones hurry down the path as fast as they can. I’ve also discovered it’s still Christmas. Maybe I’ve returned on the same day I left.
My head aches. I can’t focus properly, but I see something fading in the gloom. It looks like that portaloo. But it’s intact. It can’t be. My wolf smashed it. I’m so tired.
As strong hands flip me over, I catch a glimpse of a broken umbrella lying in the bushes, bent spokes poking through muddy fabric. It looks so familiar. I once had one just like it.
“What’s your name love?” the woman asks, rotating my head back.
She looks young, very young, with her smooth skin and wide eyes and long blonde hair tied back in a bun. I try to reply, but I just want to close my eyes and sleep. I feel hands delve into my coat and rummage.
“Mrs Breaker-Smith?”
Who? I’m just Edi.
I must have said it out loud because the woman repeats, “Edi? Can you tell me what happened?”
Not right now, thanks.
It’s still dark inside closed eyelids when I feel myself rise off the ground like the Ghost of Christmas Lost, but I’m only airborne for a moment. The ground returns beneath me, yet something clanks and squeaks as I bump up and down. A metallic clang precedes two base thumps and my body shudders with each impact. An engine rumbles to life. It’s a sound I haven’t heard for so long and the shock makes me wail inside my head. My home has voices and howls and growls and hisses and birdsong and laughter and love. This is not my home.
I jerk as the engine roars and a horrifying noise shrieks at me, over and over. I long to clamp my hands over my ears, but I can’t move.
It’s a siren. A siren. A siren.
I don’t want to hear it. I won’t hear it. I run into the night. Far far away from the Earth.
I don’t know how far I’ve run or where I am, but I can’t hear anything anymore. My mum came to me once, when it was dark within, but she’s not here now. No-one’s here. I am alone.
The rumbling engine ceases and I open my eyes as I’m lifted out of an ambulance on a stretcher and rolled into the Accident and Emergency department of some hospital or other. A honking, drunken rendition of Jingle Bells sounds even worse than Wings, especially when delivered in harmony with a bunch of screaming toddlers, one of whom has inserted a car in his ear. People cling to bloody bits of themselves, swaying in the waiting room. A five foot tall guy in an over sized T-Rex costume grabs his back, groaning in agony. Another poor soul regurgitates his Christmas dinner onto the floor as I wheel past.
I’m deposited into a curtained off cubicle and transferred to the bed. Now I can only hear the mayhem rather than see it.
“Can I go home now, please?” I ask an exceptionally tall nurse who has her back to me.
“Not yet, er... Edi,” she replies, turning.
“Mama,” I exclaim, recognising the features of my friend, Mama Bear.
“Sorry, I’m not your mother,” she replies, checking the bump on my head. “The doctor will see you as soon as he can. How are you feeling?”
“Ok,” I reply, although the stress headache is pretty rank. “I took a bump, but I’m ok now. I thought you were a friend of mine. Her nickname’s Mama Bear, because she likes kids. Obviously you’re not my mother and I’m not yours either.”
“No,” says the nurse, dredging up a tired smile. She ushers me out of my clothes and into a glorious bumless gown, before administering the usual round of tests.
She’s taking my blood pressure with that rubber tyre thingy when I catch sight of my left hand. “Where’s my wedding ring?” comes out before I can stop it.
“You weren’t wearing a ring when they brought you in,” she replies.
No, of course I wasn’t. I lost it to the mould in a blown up castle, but I don’t think I’ll mention that.
“I must have lost it in the park.”
“Shall we call your husband?” she asks, sticking a needle in my arm.
“No, he isn’t here,” I reply. “I lost him too.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Doctor won’t be long,” says the nurse before gliding through the curtains.
And here I lie, listening to the drunks deliver an entire carol service, backwards, and someone working out their frustration by kicking their chair legs non stop. I’m about to scream ‘I want to go home’ and start crying, when the curtains rustle and a young man in a white coat enters.
My first thought is to wonder whether he’s come to take me away for mental health evaluation or a nice rest in an old people’s home. Not that I couldn’t do with a rest, all things considered. My second reaction is to gawp at the blond hair and eyelashes of a doctor who:
a) is young enough to be my son (which isn’t hard) and
b) looks exactly like a younger version of Anguis.
“I’m Doctor Angus,” he tells me, without a trace of Scotland in his voice. He might be missing a vowel in the name, but he sounds exactly like my snake.
“Good evening,” I croak. “I’m Edith Breaker-Smith Fff...” I decide to leave the final part of my name out for obvious reasons.
“Can you tell me what happened tonight, Edith?”
Time to lie for England and make it good.
“I had a big Christmas dinner and decided to take a walk in the park.”
“In the dark?”
“I had a torch and there’s always people walking their dogs there, even at Christmas. I tripped on the path and must have bumped my head on a tree. I wasn’t down for long because I remember the man with his dachshund.”
“Had you been drinking during the day?” asks Dr Angus.
Oh dear, he looks suspicious. I’ve seen Anguis give me that face.
“No, I don’t drink, unless you count a gallon of tea.”
He doesn’t laugh. I need to rein in the sarcasm here, or I may never escape.
“Are you on any medication?” is the next question.
The brussel sprout and prune cure for constipation. The hump a werewolf treatment for sciatica.
“No, and no drugs of any kind,” is my actual reply.
“How’s your memory?” he asks.
“You hum a tune and I’ll tell you if I recognise it.”
Damn. I just couldn’t stop myself. At least he chuckled.
“State the day, month and year.”
“As it’s Christmas Day, you probably want to try another test,” I point out, although I do take a chance and give him the year. It’s now I find out for certain that no time has passed since I first went through the portal.
“I’m going to give you a sequence of numbers. Please repeat them backwards. 8, 22, 5, 7, 40.”
I repeat them in my head, feeling the stress ramp up, then oblige. “40, er 7, 5, 22, 8.”
“Good. Please list the months of the year in reverse.”
“December, November, October...”
And on it goes until I qualify for functioning brain cell of the year.
It takes hours of waiting to obtain the stunning diagnosis of bump on the bonce, but since I briefly lost consciousness, a few more hours of observation should see me right, particularly since nobody turns up to claim me. I lie about that as well, telling them my friend Arlene will be at home in the morning, returning from Christmas with her parents, and will take care of me. I have no idea where the name came from.
Somewhere during the horrendously long wee hours of the night and morning, a porter, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Alpha, wheels me to another, slightly less salubrious area and leaves me there with a glass of water and a straw.
Through a gap in the curtain, I watch Anguis’s junior doppleganger go about his doctoring, exhibiting the exact same mannerisms and gait, confusing me all the more. Once I take to fantasising about having had a son with Anguis, I know it’s time to call it a night and strive to get some shut eye amidst the ongoing racket.
Grief hammers against the door of my mind, hollering to be let in, but I refuse to open. Somewhere in time, a little girl sits beneath a Christmas tree, held in her father’s arms as her mother sings Silent Night in the voice of an angel.
