130 Days
To Go
Chips of light – Mumshine's lips kissing me – hazelnut latte – screams – howling wolf – Omar whimpering.
Mouthful of cold sand.
Smashed teeth.
Tunnelling through black.
Books – shelves – stacked ….
The library! I knew these shelves, the skylight, the posters of joyous clowns reading to little kids.
I didn't know the shirtless blob positioned on the inflatable pool recliner. Its cheeks were so fat its lips were hardly even there. King Adam had become a chubby, dark-faced tadpole. He lay on one elbow, head propped up, barely.
The shattered eggshell of my head was still coming together and I had grit on my gums. I ran my tongue over my teeth. I'd chipped my incisors when I'd fainted. I'd woken to shoes moving in front of my eyes, the world tipped sideways, and Maeve sneering something about court, courtrooms, judgement.
'You will remain,' the slug-king began, and three words in he needed a break. The so-called king let out a big sigh. 'Remain in the dock while the court is in session.'
He was gesturing a fat hand towards a wood pallet on the floor of the children's storytime pit. We came to this library once when we were like, god – seven years old?
Anya walked over and toed the pallet. Get on.
'I'm not standing on that thing. I answer to… .' I looked around the walls for some sign of the outside. My eyes finally focused, fixing on a world map. 'The United Nations. They say you can't do this. I say.'
'YOU WILL STAND IN THE DOCK.'
'I WANT TO SEE MY FRIEND. WHERE IS OMAR? HE'D BETTER BE ALIVE.'
'YOU WILL RESPECT THE COURT.' He took a big gulp of air, put both hands on the ground and found the strength to raise his top half upward.
Anya grabbed a fistful of my hair and barged me until I stepped onto the pallet.
'You guys can't do this to me. This is epic messed up.'
Between her hair and her nervous fiddly fingers, Maeve's voice said, 'Stealing��s messed up. You've made our world unsafe, bae.'
The library doors opened and everyone in the universe came in –Watson, joining KT, Maeve, Anya, me and Adam and Eli, and Esther who I saw hand over a wad of money – it had to be $50,000– to Anya, who in exchange handed her two cans of beans which she clutched like dolls. Chan stood beside Es, sucking caramel sauce off his finger. He must have scraped it off the road, fighting 100 ants for a tiny bit of deliciousness, ten precious kilojoules. The soldiers and serfs and suck-ups filled the space between me and the Adam The Maggot, sitting on the levels of the pit, where children were supposed to be with their mums, reading stories. Where my child might someday play if I got out of this.
If I was allowed to die, I would have sprinted over to the lounger, strangled the lazy rude blob that called itself king, then let Anya have her way with me. But I had a baby. I wasn't allowed to take the satisfying way out. I even lost the confidence to step off the pallet. 'Tell me what you did with him.'
'Omar Saleh is in custody awaiting trial,' the king said. 'What he stands accused of doing… glegh… Far exceeds what you're accused of.' Adam unwrapped some yellow brick that could have been cheese or butter and bit into it then moaned with pleasure.
'You can't trial shit. No one elected you.'
'Elections will be held six months from now,' the king said. He still hadn't bothered to sit up. Even his words were lazy, downbeat. 'Until then, I will… urp… Will govern as caretaker.'
'THEN CALL YOURSELF CARETAKER. QUIT CALLIN YOURSELF KING. WE DON'T HAVE TO BE ALL SPLITTED-UP.'
'Court is now in session,' he said. 'Please remain silent until invited to speak.'
'Forget this. I don't have to be a part of this.' I stepped off the pallet. Anya approached, holding the knife out to the side. 'Oh go on. Stab me then. I dare you. STAB A PREGNANT LADY. You're scum, Anya. You're a lackey. You're a, a, a, you're a suckerfish. You're a wannabe.'
Anya's left hand produced a load of cable ties. Maeve pushed my left shoulder down, Eli pushed my right, and KT pulled my wrists behind me. 'Stop, guys, stop this mentalness. THIS IS SO MANY KINDS OF ILLEGAL.' KT forced my hands together. As Eli and Maeve pushed my face into my knees, Anya wrapped the cable tie around my wrists then pulled so tightly I could feel the blood puff up my hands, leaving my wrists nothing but circles of bone.
'You have to STOP, you have to STOP you have to– '
Anya picked up a book. It was one of those Collins Eyewitness Guides called Democracy. She walloped my head. My ear went hot and my nose began to leak something warm. 'You want to eat this? Hm? Or you want to shut the mouth?'
My lips wiggled then let my wet gums loose. Drool poured out of my mouth. I kneeled on the pallet, my arms slowly breaking, and sobbed as the so-called court went ahead.
KT cleared her throat. 'Guys I'm like FULLY STOKED to be prosecutor, this is gonna be like SO MUCH FUN. WHEE! Kay, so last night Maeve and Eli were shopping, aaaaand guess who they caught being naughty in the supermarket.'
'You caught Omar,' Chan said, half-hiding behind his girlfriend, 'You caught him and you hurt him.'
'Yah, he got snapped,' KT said. Her eyes shone and something jiggled in her ears. Earrings. She had threaded can tabs onto paper clips and pushed the paper clips through her ear lobes. Today was a big dressup occasion. Real fun for her. 'He's on the next docket. That'll be kind of a downer.' KT tipped her head and flared her fingers. 'Don't worry, you'll get a chance to speak. Adam's like a real fair ruler, we're lucky to have him, actually. So yah, the charges. Bet you're dying to know. And I don't mean to, like, spread the blame around too much, know what I'm saying, but Maeve and Eli were shopping last night and after they busted Omar, they fully spotted, like, a fingernail? When they lifted up the manhole lid? They're witnesses, y'know. They totally reckon it's your fingernail. Course you had a whole sack of stolen goodies anyway, where they found you. You were all fainted, like are you eating okay? You might have amnesia. No what's the thing? Anaemia. But yah, when we found you this morning, all passed out and all sad-smiley-face and stuff, there was totally a trail of caramel sauce leading from where you were sleeping back to the sewer outside the supermarket? And babe, that's our pantry, okay. You ripped us off. You robbed our ruler, Eden. That's a big time no-no. But he's a fair king, the most fair in the whole land, so that's like, good news. He's, like, dropped the charges of resisting arrest, y'know cause you got all violent?'
I was so close to stepping off the pallet. Just a few centimetres til I could touch the floor. Kill. Run. Fight.
'You have to plead,' Maeve called out, her top lip curled back, unimpressed. 'Don't you see you're wasting Adam's time? Look how patient he's being right now. We wanted to kill your ass but he said we have to respect the justice system.'
'We HAD justice. You stole all the FOOD. You SEPARATED. You killed Fatima. You killed Kane. You killed Omar.'
'Ome's not dead, silly,' KT said. 'But I-M-H-O? He could totally die from his injury. That's why you shouldn't fool around when there's traps. Wish he'd just kept out of our country.'
'I built your, your, your GROTESQUE monument, your ego-piece, your pyramid. I can't believe I thought that would appease you.' I sucked the salty goop out of my nose and eyes. I wanted to spew it all over Tadpole Boy. His resting face had a tiny smirk on it, like I was the one thing other than food that was interesting to him.
'EDEN! Eyes over here, bae. Don't address the king directly. Listen, do you want like a public defender or like a champion or something?'
I looked straight to Chan. Chan was staring at his feet. Esther was playing with her fingers, avoiding my gaze.
KT… Esther… Maeve… Cha – Watson. WATSON.
'Wats. Dude. You have to defend me. You HAVE to.'
He looked to each side of him, as if there might have been another Watson who could have taken the call. He took wobbly, hesitant steps across the carpet before he stood at my side. He looked down at me, ugly and pathetic, tied up on a pallet which was wet from my tears soaking into the wood.
He took an awkward glance over his shoulder, looked around the crowd for someone to get him out of this.
'Wats, I'm so scared. I don't know what to do.'
'To be frank, I think if you plead not guilty, your baby will die.'
I blinked about fifty times. I couldn't have heard him right. 'How could anyone be so cruel?'
'They're not going to go inside you and kill it or anything. It's just, er, a baby can't exactly live if it's mum's not alive. Can I go now?'
I lifted my head. I was crying, then the screw-it-all part of me laughed. There was something in my legs that let me rock forward, and just as I was about to tip into the pit, I found the strength to rise, wobbling so badly I nearly fell – but something helped me up. 'I'm guilty,' I announced. 'Lock me up. I'll need a bed. I'm having a – guys, I'm having a BABY.'
'The court accepts the plea,' King Adam said, ignoring me. 'You are sentenced to exile for the term of 18 months.'
'I'M HAVING A BABY, I SAID.'
'And I said 18 months.'
'WE'RE NOT EVEN GONNA BE IN HERE THAT LONG. YOU'RE GONNA BE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE WHEN THEY OPEN THE DOOR.'
Adam sat right up and smiled. His fat eyes looked like those of a dugong. His minions stuffed pillows under his back. He couldn't even take his own weight any more. 'Then I'd better enjoy this while it lasts.'