My Castle’s Garden
Steve liked to look down on the little gnomes they had placed in the garden, because it always made him feel like a giant. In the house it’d been the other way; locked in his home he’d been the gnome, and Wayne the giant. Steve told himself, I am the giant now, and I’ll get out. Not a very confident voice. He knew the bigger giant was still around, lurking in the ground, among the grass. Even within their only tree, equipment had been drilled into the root, with wires running around it, through the ground, down into the basement.
A bush-cutter was in the tree, a trimmer by the fence, a lawn mower in the shed, and other tools were installed by the foot path going between the shed and the glasshouse. Perhaps going through the house would be a better option after all. Perhaps in there he’d just be beaten, thrown into walls and get his legs broken. Not be thrown under the lawnmower after being cut open by garden tools. He could end up shredded to pieces, and then Wayne would happily play sadist doctor with his insides. He swallowed hard.
Perhaps he should just stand around and wait for help. It felt like the safest thing to do. Stand here. Do nothing. Here at the edge where porch met lawn he was actually safe. He could scream for help, he reckoned. “HELP! HELP!” He stopped. He felt ridiculous: here was a full grown man, a family man, a Manchester United man, and in the time of facing perils, he was just standing around screaming for help. No way, mate, he was going to face this thing like a man. Ignoring the little voice inside his head who told him screaming for help wasn’t too bad of a thing to do, he thought of the real Wayne Rooker going on to a soccer field; he thought of prizes, of winning cups; he thought of heroes.
“Right”, he said, and took the first step.
It all began. The ground opened up, hatches covered by grass slid aside and out came arms of model GREEN 23 E-C, armed with sharp cutters and axes, made for cutting branches and chopping wood (he’d ordered the axe as they had discussed installing a little fireplace, to also get that country-house feel in one part of the house). The axe took a swing at his legs. Steve took a step back, tripping to a side-step, then another step forward as the cutter came at him from another side. Clip-clip-clip, it sounded by his left foot.
From then on there was only one way, the way forward – he started running.
Pebbles placed on the little path rustled about, and more garden tools appeared. Steve stepped on one of the GREEN 23 arms, which sent him flying into the side of the greenhouse. Glass shattered and bits rained onto his arm and back. Luckily, he hadn’t gone through the glass, just cracked it. He looked up towards the house and saw projectiles hurtling from the sky. As he rolled over, screw drivers, bricks and screws missed him by mere inches, and struck down into Maggie’s little tomato plants. He felt the juice of cherry tomatoes in his face and eyes; he kept rolling onto grass now strewn with screws.
The longer I stay in the bloody backyard, he thought, the less likely I am to survive this ordeal.
To avoid a brick, he made his first sit-up in over a year. He then rolled to the side again and got to his feet. He grabbed the tree and swung around it as screws and nails bit into the wood like tiny arrows. Some went into his legs, and he screamed out loud. The pain reminded him of getting flu jabs at Boots, which now he would’ve preferred …
He caught his breath on the other side of the tree. Looking around, he contemplated jumping across the fence. Too high. He’d be too slow climbing it, end up with a cutter or an axe in the back or ass before he’d make it into the neighbour’s garden.
A lid opened in the ground in front of the bushes, on this side of the tree. And a branch scratched his face as something came through it and grabbed him from inside the tree; it just got some hairs of his head before he rolled across the ground playing Fat Ninja (this had been a videogame they used to play when he was ten years old). Wayne’s garden eye shot out of the ground, about to give Steve a head-butt as he was getting up, and Steve’s escape would’ve ended right there if he hadn’t got hold of one of the tools Wayne had been throwing, and used it to give the eye a good whack on the side. It seemed to cause a slight, if only second-long concussion for Wayne, a short unfocused moment, which was all Steve needed.
Steve ran across the last bit of lawn. Behind him, garden gnomes were pulled from the ground and sent raining down on him, a flying gnome-army bouncing off his back, surely to leave some marks and bruises. He swung the wooden gate open and pulled it closed. Steve heard beats and taps on the wood as gnomes and screws and whatnot hit the gate from the other side. He sat with his back to the gate, pulling nails from his legs. He looked at one of the small wounds, but it didn’t even bleed that much.
He smiled. Wayne couldn’t reach him now. Steve was sitting on the other side of their garden gate, now on a public footpath, which was surprisingly wild with long grass and more bushes, and even a palm tree hanging over the fences of other gardens. A footpath of the New Town jungle.
Steve wasn’t concerned about wild and dangerous experiences. For him, the bad stuff was over, and he’d won the game – Wayne had lost.
But the game was just beginning; this was a mere advertisement break.
Not even second half yet.
The story continues in Wayne’s Game – Book two:
The Perils of New Town …
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