"My name is Norman Manyheads.
I can take you there, but I cannot show you the way."
-Norman Manyheads, The Road to Saddle River.
Once upon a time, there was a fairy princess and she was called Hilary. Hilary worked in an office with a rubber plant and a man whose name she'd forgotten. And she lived with her mother, and her mother's father who was seventy-six and deaf and who secretly ate dog food. Although it wasn't much of a secret.
Hilary never really liked people. Her best friend was a mouse called Linda; a present from her father before he ran away to Burlington with a woman from the post office on Hilary's fifth birthday. A day after Hilary's fifth birthday, great lumps of Linda's fur fell out, and she died. So she wrote to her father, and her father sent a replacement. The new Linda had no fur at all, and if you wanted her to move, you had to wind her up. And even then she had traction problems on carpet. But she was still Hilary's best friend. And she was still better than people.
"You can't trust people," said Hilary's mother.
And Hilary agreed. And didn't trust her mother either. And at night, she dreamed of a life without people, a life far away with just her and Linda, a life ... on Mars.
But being a practical sort, Hilary would always settle for two weeks in August at a border house, on the east coast, watching cliffs fall into the sea, while her grandfather suffered prickling heat, and various shell-fish disagreed with her mother.
Life was on the whole, rather dull.
"You know your problem," said Hilary's grandfather.
And Hilary ignored him because he was deaf and because he never listened to anyone when he could hear.
"Your problem," said Hilary's grandfather, "is you're boring. You don't do anything."
"I don't smell of dog food," said Hilary.
"When I was your age," said Hilary's grandfather, "I lived life in the fast lane."
And then he went about all the countries he'd been to, and all the men he had fights with, and all the women he slepped with, and all the diseases he caught. And Hilary knew her life was not in the fast lane, nor for that matter, was it in the slow lane. Hilary's life was idling at a red light, with one eye on the petrol gage, patiently awaiting for the engine to stall.
Until one day she met a man. And the next day she met him again. And the next day she didn't meet him, because her grandfather got knocked down on his ebral crossing. And their was all manner of commotion. But the day after that she met him. And by the end of the week, she'd lost her appetite, and started writing poetry of terrific poignency and length. And at the end of the month, he proposed. And she said yes, and took him home to meet her mother. And her mother was ... somewhat hostile.
"I thought I told you not to trust people," said Hilary's mother. "You can't trust him. Look at him. He doesn't love you, he just wants someone to cook his tea and clean his dirty underpants. And the minute your bum starts to sag, he'll dump you like that, for some teenage bimbo shop-girl, with bleached hair and pierced nipples. And what kind of job is playing the piano for a grown man? And whose going to look after your grandfather when he gets out of the hospital?"
And Hilary said, "I'm pregnant."
After they were married, Hilary got fatter and fatter, until she had a baby. It was relentlessly loud and clammy, but they kept it, and it grew up into a little girl. And together, they were a family.
And they lived in a house which Hilary said wasn't big enough. So Hilary's husband built an extension. And Hilary said it still wasn't big enough. So her husband extended the extension. And Hilary said it still wasn't big enough. And her husband said it is big enough. And Hilary said it isn't.
And her husband said, "why?"
And Hilary said, "I need more space."
And her husband said, "What do you need more space for? You don't do anything.
And Hilary started to cry. And her husband said sorry, and built another extension.
And as the house grew, Hilary seemed to shrink. She stopped going outside and sometimes she whispered very quietly what sounded like obsentities. But you could never be sure if it was your imagination, because Hilary didn't speak much anymore. She didn't have any will of her own. So if her husband said, dance. She danced. And if he didn't, she didn't. And although somedays Hilary loved her family very much, and they were just ... angels. Other days, they weren't. They were strange and cruel and rude about her behind her back, and to her face. And one day, while she was hiding from them, at the bottom of a wardrobe, Hilary found Linda.
And Linda said, "I thought we were going to Mars."
And Hilary looked at Linda ... at her little plastic whiskers ... and her painted on eyes ... and said, "Oh yes."
-Anthony Hodgson
Book of Dreams
Ta ta.. sucker..
