OVERTHEEDGE
| January 30, 2008

S>CREATIVE WRITING FEATURE.

he felt so lonely, yet there were more people here than normal; they just were not the people

@ who should be here, he thought sadly.

All three adults were dressed in mourners’ black, a stark contrast to the white that Simon
was wearing. What were they mourning anyway? The loss of someone they’d never met? His
mother had cut his hair short only days before, she had kept telling him she loved him and he’d
said back. Now he understood it all, or thought he did; she had done it in the style of a boy
mourning the loss of his mother. She didn’t want him to mourn, he was sure of that but she
knew he would, might as well get a head start on him and say to the world he was, before she
even went.

Of the others currently standing in the small kitchen he knew little beyond their names and
what they looked like. The first man, Mr. Beechum, was tall and slim like a rake, a long thin
face; slightly balding, red hair was patched sparsely on his head. Next to him stood his wife,
shorter and plump, wispy black hair going somewhat grey. Finally, the third adult, a man, old
and grey but his manner had been brisk and business like, the executor of the will and the fam-
ily solicitor Mr. Templeton.

Simon was to stay here tonight, Mrs. Beechum, was to stay with him. He did not know her,
he had never met her but she was to take him in, the Beechums would be his new parents. His
mother had made all the arrangements, yet another secret she had never shared with him. Her
secrets, as much as he loved her, were proving to be the bane of his existence. She’d held not
only all the aces but all the cards as well. She’d known she was dying, he could forgive her
not wanting to tell him that. The arrangements she had made, well that went with the first he
supposed.

Who they were running from? Now that was what he wanted to know. They’d been running
ever since he could remember but she never told him why, except when he’d asked she had said
it wasn’t his father. His father, he was just another card held in an unseen hand. Who was he,
why were there no pictures about? For Pete’s sake, he had only found out her name when Mr.
Templeton had read out the will; he had only ever known her as mum or mummy. No one, as
far as he could remember, had ever called her Jennifer, it was always Mrs. Levison or Senorita
Levison, or whatever the word was in the place they happened to be. He understood why they’d
stopped now though. She had gotten sick.

They’d come home to England, not for her to get better but for her to live out their last few
months together in quiet seclusion because of course she couldn’t go to hospital or they’d find
us. It wasn’t jokingly or snidely that he thought this. For all her secrets she hadn’t been mad.
They’d been running for a reason and the choice not to tell had been, he guessed, for his protec-
tion.

He had been walking without realising it and unconsciously his feet had taken him to the

CREATIVE

doorway to his room. Of every room, of everything in this house, his room was the most
unfamiliar, the place he could feel the biggest loss. He could feel her here still like a ghost
lingering, unable to leave this life completely. It reminded him of the ghost stories she used to
read him. He saw one on the floor and picked it up. With that one touch it all washed over him,
overwhelming his senses. Tears streaming down his face, he stood trapped in this lifeless room,
the fear of what was to come paralysing him. He had never been good with other people, the
only person he’d really known was her and now he was being taken away by people he’d never
met, to a life he was never meant to live.

Frantically his eyes searched for something, anything to anchor him. This was meant to be
home. It was meant to be safe. How could she have died when it was meant to be safe! The
whitewashed walls were closing in, the beige carpet smelt of her. She was here with him and
not at the same time and it hurt so bad. The puzzle on the floor of a dragon guarding a hoard
of treasure that they’d been doing only the day before yesterday. She had seemed fine and then
suddenly yesterday she had collapsed. He was still holding the book in his hand, he threw it
away and it hit the wall hard and the cover broke. Books weren’t to be damaged, she had told

‘him, they to be loved and respected. Yet that book wasn’t his anymore, it was someone else’s,

a different Simon, her Simon. He wasn’t that boy anymore, he was someone else’s Simon now,
Mrs. Beechum’s Simon, whoever she was and whoever she expected him to be.

Only one thing in the room still felt his, the one thing that could comfort him when she
couldn’t. It was there laying on his bed just as he’d left it, his teddy bear, Edward. The grey-
brown fur was patchy, the enamel part of the nose slightly chipped, at some point the left
arm had fallen off and his mother had sewn it on back-to-front. He couldn’t remember when
the bear got washed last. He didn’t really care though; it was his.

In all their time travelling only once had he forgotten Edward, only once had he had to go
back and the events associated with that parting had been so terrifying he was determined never
to let himself get too far from the bear again. Even more so now that she was goné, Edward
was his only friend. ‘

He closed the door softly and lay down, hugging the bear close to his body, letting the tears
soak into the fur as his body convulsed.

He was not aware of when the change came, from sobs to sleep. His dreams were night-
mares filled with her; she was leaving him in every way possible. He was standing in stations
in foreign countries as she got on trains, at airports as she got on planes, in crowds as they were
separated. Each time she left him behind. Each time his heart wrenched apart a little more and
silent sobs violently shook his body, though fast asleep, he felt nothing but the aching pain of
his shattered heart deep within his dreams. ,

And in that dark cleft of his heart and mind, something stirred...

WRITING FEATURE