Subject to Alteration

Jane Virgo ©

- Click -

Edna Enid Martingale lifts her straggly head out of her scraggly shawl and tries to make sense of the altered landscape.

“Oh dear”, she sighs.  “Not again!  And I left all the lights on – oh, the waste!”

Around her leaves detach themselves from trees and fall gently upward.  The sun has taken on a most unflattering shade of green and she feels too light for her one hundred and eighty kilograms.

“Gravity,” she nods knowingly.

Another person might scream with terror, but Edna Enid has always known that reality is an absurdist plot, a television program subject to alteration at the last minute.

“Someone must have changed the channel,” she muses, “Oh, and I left the TV on too.”

She sits down on a convenient rock and takes out her knitting, which fortunately has come along for the journey.  She is knitting a cardigan for her granddaughter.  Last year she knitted a doll for her grandson.  Edna Enid does not believe in sexism.

Over the horizon, which really does drop away much too sharply rides a knight in shining armor.

“Oh no,” thinks Edna Enid, “all my life I dreamed of this, but now I’m much too old -

Meanwhile, the towering knight reins in his powerful stallion and courteously raises his visor, to reveal his aged, majestic face.

- perhaps I’m not too old, after all.

The knight graceously clears his throat:

“Fair maiden,” he booms, “if you would but hear my plight!  In yonder castle, beyond the dreaded Darkest Forest, lurks a golden dragon, of the fire breathing variety.  With brazen claw and and adamant teeth, yea it has wrought much havoc on village and pasture, on man and beast.  The fiend holds captive our king’s own daughter, the fairest princess ever to grace our kingdom!  And it falls my duty, and my honour to slay this monster.  And yet I fear my great strength and unrivalled courage may not suffice, and so I seek a token, the least of tokens, from a beauteous virgin, such as yourself.

Edna Enid sneezes, which she always does when it’s not polite to laugh.  She opens her mouth to protest that, alas, she is no longer a virgin, when out of the Darkest Forest, tarnished hooves flying like the wind, gallops a dusty unicorn.  It gazes longingly at Edna Enid with soft rheummy eyes,then trustingly lays its battered head upon her lap.

“And how can I argue with that?” she wonders, “Really, this must be a very low budget production.”

Carefully Edna Enid removes her sequinned hairnet and presents it to the waiting knight. Overcome by the beauty of her long grey hair, he cannot speak, but solemnly lowers his visor before riding steadfastly into the Darkest Forest.

With a heartfelt sigh, Edna Enid turns her attention to the unicorn.  “Do you speak?” she asks.

“Of course I do!” replies the unicorn, “though really, I don’t wonder that you ask.  The casting department has gotten me into such an obscure role.  My hide looks, uh, motheaten, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be, and if only I had hands…”

“Unicorns don’t have hands.”  says Edna Enid.

“So that’s what I am!” cries the unicorn, “I say, thank you so much!” and with a grateful dip of its gilded horn the creature prances off into the scrub.

Edna Enid gazes after it for a while, and then picks up her knitting. Some time later she notices that the sky is darkening to olive – and she is still here.

“Bother.”  she says,  “I’m not going to be home for dinner.”

But Edna Enid is reluctant to move.

If she does not get home soon, she will have to find shelter for the night, but what if she is transported home from a different location? The last time that happened, she materialized right in the middle of an all men’s sauna.  And the time before that she popped up in a courtroom.  A trial was in progress and the judge was most unfriendly.  It was all quite awkward, but Edna Enid has grown adept at talking her way out of awkward situations.

Most people do not understand that all the world’s a soundstage and the men and women only players in a TV soup opera.

Edna Enid shivers: a cool wind is blowing and the last gold streaks are fading from the olive black sky.  She must find shelter, despite the consequenses.  After plaitting her hair, she secures it under the wolly cap that she always keeps in her pocket, just in case. Then she begins to walk in the opposite direction to the forest, and

- Click -

Edna Enid is sitting inside something large and…yes, moving.  It seems to be some kind of freight transport.

“I probably won’t be home for dinner tomorrow night either.  Hugo will be upset.  I wonder if this is going to Melbourne.  I’d like to go to Melbourne.  It has been a long time since I saw Ethel and Mildred. I hope Hugo remembers  to water the pot plants.  Last time I went away, all the ferns dried out and I had an awful time getting them wet again.  Still it would be nice to go to Melbourne.

She takes out her knitting.

“They can run films at different speeds, when they run old silent movies on TV, they’re all speeded up.  Maybe I”ve been speeded up!  Then I won’t be late for dinner after all – but what if I’ve been slowed down.  It’s such a bother.  Hugo will just have to do his own cooking and…Oh!

Edna Enid puts down her knitting, quite horrified.

“I’m a stowaway.  Wherever I am, whatever will they think of me?  I wonder what they do to stowaways here.  I’ll just explain it was an accident.

She picks up her knitting and carefully unknits the last row.

“Strange.” she says, examining the needles.  She takes her watch out of her pocket – yes! it is ticking backwards.

“Really!  They’ve started this program from the wrong end!  Most careless…unless they’re rewinding.  Yes, that must be it.  I do feel strange.”  Her heart is beating rapidly and her ears are ringing.  She begins to feel nauseous, but then the lights go out, and she faints.

*****************

The huge intergalactic liner, in whose hull Edna Enid lies unconscious, continues to travel at many times the speed of light.

Long ago the beneficial side-effects of faster-than-light travel were discovered when the first F.T.L. ship returned to port piloted by a bewildered five year old captain.  Nowadays, crew and Class A passengers reside in specially shielded null-time cabins, while Class B passengers – which category now includes Edna Enid – are subjected to the naked temporal forces which provide the most effective and expensive rejuvination process ever discovered.  Temporal therapy generates unnpleasant side effects such as rapid heart beat and nausea, but while bonefide Class B passengers are blissfully comotose, Edna Enid has not been so lucky.

But there are no permanent ill effects, and when the ship slows to below the light barrier, Edna Enid awakes.  She yawns, stretches, and notices that she feels extremely well.

“That was a fast rewind.  I’m not even hungry yet.”

And then the lights come on:  “Oh no.  I’m quite unwrinkly.  What? Oh, bother.  This means I’ll have to go through all that living again, I do hate reruns.  How will I ever explain this to Hugo?  and the children – they’re so conservative.”  She wrinkles her nose in disgust on noticing that her hips have lost enormous bulk.  She has to tie her scarf around her waist to keep her skirt from falling down and her stockings are bagging at the ankles.

“It’s a good thing I don’t have varicose veins any more.  These things wouldn’t support anything.  I’d better neaten myself up before I meet the officials.  What a shame, I don’t think I’m in Melbourne, or even on the right channel.  I wonder what the people are like here.  Maybe they look like big blue slugs.  Wouldn’t that be quaint?”

Edna is still tugging at her stockings when the door slides open to reveal a big blue slug.

“Aha!”, it slithers, “A stowaway!”

“I knew it,” thinks Edna, keeping calm.  I wonder what big blue slugs do to stowaways.”

As the slug advances menacingly

- Click -

This time Edna Enid’s knitting is missing.  Three clicks in one day were too much for it.  Three clicks are too much for Edna too.  She has a nasty feeling that she is never going to get home again, for any dinner.  By now she must be well out of receiving distance for her home chanel and the novelty of clicking has quite worn off.

Still, tomorrow could be interesting providing she can find something to eat, and providing nobody wants to eat her.

- Click.