Creative Work
Extract from 'The Dragon On The Wall'
Some squatters have moved into the house at the back of mine. The bedroom windows have been broken for a long time, but this morning I noticed that two of them have been boarded up where the glass was missing. It's going to be very cold at nights when the winter comes round. It they're still there. People come and go in this neighbourhood.
I'm not sure how many of them are living there, but I saw a woman moving about the back room while I was making a cup of tea in the kitchen. I could see a TV set flickering but I don't think there's much else in there.
A bit later on I saw a little boy come running out of the back door. The woman was shouting after him, ‘I want you back in half an hour Marlon, do you hear me?' Marlon didn't give her a backward glance; just jumped over a pile of bricks, and then I lost sight of him as he ran down the entry.
It's a wasteland out there. Full of bin liners that have been ripped apart by the dogs, and all the rubbish spilling out onto the cobbles. I had a go at clearing it up once. I found a syringe lying on the ground underneath a pile of rusty cans and decaying food. I imagined somebody creeping along there late at night and shooting up in the darkness outside my back gate. It gave me the shivers, so I left it all to carry on mouldering.
The weather had been very warm just recently. It makes everyone lazy and even the dust doesn't move about like it usually does. I sit out on the steps by the back door when it's nice, and get a bit of sun. It really catches it in the yard in the afternoons. I had some pansies in a tub by the gate, but the cats dug them up and pissed in the pots. There aren't many trees or flowers around here. Only the rubbish blooms in the spring, and you catch a waft of it when the breeze is blowing. Some days I feel as if I've been fossilised in a layer of dirt.
I hear the voice of the city in the summertime. The noise is carried on the back of the heat that hangs over the streets and the rooftops. It's raucous and loud and drags people out of their houses to sit in the back yards and on the front steps. I hear them talking above the sound of the music on the radios blaring from kitchens and living rooms.
I was listening to its song late this afternoon, and wondering when it would call me back again, when I saw the little boy for the second time. He had climbed up over my back wall and was perched on top of it like a victorious mountain climber. He was wearing a pair of khaki pants and a matching shirt that hung down loosely over his skinny wrists. His features were small and indistinct, as if they were trying to escape from the expression on his face. I couldn't see the colour of his eyes, but I guessed they would be flat and grey, like a muddy pool of water. I said, ‘You shouldn't be up there, you'll break your neck.'
‘No I won't,' he said, kind of surly.
‘Oh yes you will,' I said.
I'm not very good with children. Never having had any. So I let him sit up there. He looked sure enough. He was playing with some kind of toy, or little statue, and I asked him what it was. I could see it was brightly coloured – blue and violet and green – but I couldn't make out what it was from where I was sitting.
He told me it was a dragon. I asked him what sort of dragon and he looked at me like I was stupid, and said, ‘the dragon on the wall.'
We ignored each other quite happily for about half an hour, and he left when his mum called him in for tea. I went inside. It's Monday, and I go to my group meeting on a Monday.
I've been going there for about six months now. It's up at St. Mary's in town, in a side room off the corridor in the psychiatric unit. I think it's doing me good, although it's hard to measure your own progress.
They say I need to get out more and stop cutting myself off from things. But the summer makes me lazy and I just like to sit and watch sometimes. Time passes by me, unmarked, except for mealtimes, and the occasional walk or a trip to the library. I'm building myself up for the day I feel strong enough to go out and live again. It can get lonely.
I use the time to listen, and think, and feel.
Marlon came and sat on the wall again today. He had his dragon with him. It's quite big, about the size of coffee mug, and I think he talks to it. His lips move, but no sound comes out. I asked him what it was called, but he ignored me. I tried a different tack.
‘Have you been to school today?'
‘Don't go to school.'
‘Aren't you old enough?' I asked. He looks old enough.
He shut up again and started talking to the dragon. I wanted to talk some more, but he closed in on himself and I couldn't reach him there. He reminds me of a shadow, he's so quiet and motionless. It's as if I conjure him up from nowhere, and I wondered if he would exist without me here.
I gave the dragon a name anyway. I called it Fafnir after a poem I read once. It's about a dragon who's just minding his own business and getting on with things.
But eventually the knights will come.
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