Something I worked on awhile back... making a title illustration for a great short story by Heather Hayward. This was published in Issue 3 of DOAS (Death of a Scenester), a lovely Zournal (zine/journal) published in Melbourne.
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| story by Heather Hayward |
Emma's
head was really big for her age, which was a contributing factor to
her poor head space. Kids at her school would say with tactless
frankness "You've got a big head and a little body", they
compared her overall shape to a potato sitting on top of a pea.
In
addition to the cruelties of the present, Emma worried about her
future. She wanted to work in an office like her mother, but she
wondered desperately how she would get past the interview, and how
would she ever wear the standard-sized hands-free head set if she
did? Would they get I.T to make her a special one and politely not
say anything about it to her? She imagined finding it sitting at her
desk
one
morning, a massive apparatus cobbled together from old e-waste, seen
by all but never talked about. These were the sorts of things that
Emma worried about, although being only eight years of age, she
didn't think quite in these terms, but it was as though, in an
abstract way she knew these were the sort of future worries that
awaited her.
Everything
changed however, when she awoke one morning to find a small planet
orbiting her head. "Good morning" it said. "Don't be
alarmed, this happens sometimes, your head is so big, and your
worries so great that they have begun to form their own gravitational
pull. I was passing by on an irregular orbit from my current subject
and was drawn in to your orbit. Think of me as your life companion".
Emma's first instinct, as usual, was one of anxiety. "What if I
spoon you in to my
mouth
when I eat my cornflakes?" "I don't think that will happen"
said the planet. This was the first of many soothing words the small
projectile uttered.
It
turned out to have one of those personalities that puts people at
ease and brings out the best in everyone. At Emma's school it told a
joke about a porcupine backing into a cactus that got repeated
joyfully by students all day. It also managed to make Emma feel
comfortable about the t-shirt she was wearing, which had a picture of
a
girl wearing a plait on it, Emma was also wearing a plait and she
worried that the two plaits, one graphic, one real, made an uneasy
combination. "Very self-referential" said the planet, "I
like it".
In
fact the planet took care of all the small stresses that can make
childhood unbearable at times. It assured her that her backpack was a
great colour, and just the right size. I told her that her lunch was
lovely and that her sandwiches smelt fine. Whenever she would worry
about getting an office job the planet would shout "hey!"
every time it went past her face so she couldn't think about it
consistently for too long without interruption. The wisdom and
perspective from one hundred years of space travel and journeys to
far away galaxies was brought to bear on the life of a small child.
The planet was the voice of reason and the two entities, girl and
meteor, developed a rare and deep friendship.
While
she slept the planet would travel out on an irregular orbit and in
the morning would tell her about funny little things it saw. "I
saw a man say excuse me to a cat" or "I saw a pear fall on
an ant and then the whole colony ate until the trapped ant was
freed". Every day Emma's consciousness and sense of self
expanded. She saw things on a cosmic level as well as noticing detail
like never before.
Perhaps
these heightened powers of observation are why Emma sensed the boy
with the enormous head before she saw him. She remembered watching a
drop of water fall from the gutter of a roof and land next to a
puddle. At the very same moment that the drop detached from the
guttering, a monstrous motorbike roared into life. Somehow these two
events coinciding seemed ominous, and sure enough a boy came in to
view as the next drop of water fell. His head was colossal, heaving
and
wobbling as if acting under its own particular laws of gravity. It
was scantily clad in several hats, all stitched together and obtained
from various eras of fashion, which only served to add a sense of
timelessness to the natural wonder standing before her.
Emma
saw into the future in that instant. As she felt her planet being
pulled from her orbit into that of the boy's, she began involuntarily
lurching towards him with a desperate energy. A simple plan formed as
she lurched; to cling this stranger with the giant head. The head was
four times the size of hers, but she found it insanely beautiful.
Time seemed to slow down and Emma found herself imagining she and the
boy living together as one person, eternally strapped to one another,
two giant heads filled with healthy thoughts and a clear perspective
on life, their little bodies existing only to carry the small solar
system above them, and the planet, the wonderful planet, would orbit,
lazy and dazzling around them both.
But
of course, two eight-year-olds cannot live together in this way. Emma
was pulled off of the screaming boy, blood from her fingernails
trickling down his expansive cheek and tears, like shooting stars
fell from the eyes of them both. "I'll find you!" shouted
the planet as it and the confused boy disappeared into the distance.
It
was strange, in the weeks and months that followed, without the
planet to highlight the best in her, Emma slipped back into her old
anxieties and insecurities. She tried for a while to keep the voice
of the planet alive. For example when her Dad shouted at her for
spilling juice when pouring it, she told herself: "He has
unreasonable expectations for the co-ordination of someone your age."
But really
she
needed the help of an external perspective to properly hold on to and
apply these concepts in the long-term.
The
planet did eventually find Emma. She was eleven and had taken to
smoking in the flax bushes in the back field of her school. The
planet arrived out of breath and panting heavily said "I can't
stay long. My subject lives a long way from here. He happens to be
near by at the moment, but even this distance is on the outer reaches
of my orbit". Emma didn't know what to say. Her heart felt as
though it might break in two. She didn't know how to say that she had
been the best person that she was capable of being at the age of
eight, and that luxurious head space was now out of her grasp. How
even by the time she was forty she felt she would not have gained the
ability to achieve the mental freedom afforded to her for a short
time as a small child.
Instead
of trying to say any of these things however, she took her lighter
and held it under the planet. A few factors combined in that moment;
the planet was small and flammable, the lighter had a strong healthy
flame, but most importantly the planet didn't move as it could have.
In recognition of the pain contained in Emma's gesture, it remained
stationary until it caught alight, and only then did it stream
upwards like a small comet, desperately trying to return to the
cosmos where it had first formed. It did not get that far however
before exploding and raining down in a thin ash that covered Emma's
head and face. Emma slowly put out her cigarette and walked back to
class as the bell rang. As she walked ash from the tiny super-nova
fell from her collar, in a sooty trail down the back of her shirt and
rested in the waist-band of her shorts.
