- You’ll never be able to sell it - Okay, I’ll just give it away - Nobody with a right idea of value will take
it, even for free Trembling in a loose cube of space lost in
a hard snug matrix of glass and swirling colours in a hard brown cardboard
box painted with gay clowns on the outside,
marble
with its maker bounce in a jolly jeep over jagged
rocks and winter stubble on an anticipatedly successful journey to the
Garden City Bookstore. - I ran out of coloured fluff - Hell, next time keep it for the next batch - Thought I’d blow this little baby up- - And let it roll over the side? - Well… - What good is broken glass anyhow? On the side of a smooth, wide road lined with
machine-cut, square patches of flowers in the middle of Ambish Urn Street,
maker pulled up on a designated safe lane and groped impatiently for the
touch of smooth coldness in the darkness of the empty box. Breathing
a satisfied sigh of accomplishment, heady visions of dinner and roast golden
as the sight of the perfect city outline in the glare of the sun filled
the maker’s thoughts as his hand closed around the minute body. One
last remnant task to bring the hugely successful day to a happy close. - Ay, kid, wanna marble? - (young kid): Really, mister? - Yeah here ya go have fun kid seeya gotta
go- - (young kid to retreating back of truck):
Gee, thanks, Mister!! - (Older kid to young kid): Ay, lemme see
dat! - (young kid): Ay, give that back, it’s mine! - (Older kid, taunting): Yo, ya silly crybaby
– it’s jast a broke piece of glass! Here! Takit back. - (young kid): I don’t want it anymore.
It’s Defect. You keep it. - (Older kid shrugs and slips the marble into
an empty cigarette pack): Wha da hell is ‘defat’? Borne out of the dust of the fleeing truck,
the new world was a big glorious place with colours of every shade and
pattern, from the chubby white small hand stained with cotton candy to
the black stubbly long nicotine-stained fingers which faded to a pale brown
at the tips. Lacking of any colour of its own, the small teardrop
of marble happily obliged in the transparency of its mature to adopt all
shades and colours and textures, which distorted, wobbled and watered in
the roundness of its body. The world found its perfect image through
the smaller globe, except for the permanent lightning which emanated from
its heart, shrieking through every radius of its dimension like the branching
of roots through impervious rock, a carefully timed photo of the forerunner
of an electric storm silently thundering its message across the darkened
sky. - Here calms dat bitch. Make yerself
useful, ya lil broken piece of shit. (Older kid breathes under his breath: one…two….three!) ‘Defect’, so appropriately named by the young
mind of a child who had everything including early education in his ABCs,
was an arrow of light shot from a catapult heading for a lake of black
glass reflecting the skyline on the side of a speeding limousine with its
black-clad contents of upper-class flesh. - (Defect introduces itself with a thin breaking
sound) The sea of black-velveted flesh heaved and
swayed with gasps of shock which quickly turned into violent trembling
squeals of curses and swears at the disappearing back of the sharp-shooter. - Whot awdawcity!! That creeeethure
shell beee wheeeped!! Wheeeped I say!! - (Loook art us, howl boooteefoool wee arre!) - Whot feeelth is this?! - (And whot arre yooo? Joost a brrroken
peeeese of glarse?) - Orh! De Rarrbish that theese horrriberl
feeelthee barrstards ooose – Orh!! - (We, de bootifool diemons and joowells garrneesh
de necks of de reeche in orl oure booteee….yoooo, leeterl roune theeng
arh naught evern a cormon marrberl!! Away! Staaay awway frome us!!) (Author’s translation: - What audacity? The creature shall be whipped!
Whipped I say!! - (Look at us, how beautiful we are) - What filth is this? - (And what are you? Just a broken piece of
glass?) - Oh! The rubbish that these filthy bastards
use – Oh! - (We, the beautiful diamonds and jewels garnish
the necks of the rich in all our beauty…you, little round thing, are not
even a common marble! Away! Stay away from us!!) ) A smart thick click and a sharp quick toss. The black lake, disturbed with an angry pattern
of lightning like a copy of the heart of Defect, slid away on the sleek
road like a long black snake, while the world went up and down, up and
down dizzily as Defect went clickity-click, clackity-clack, click, clack,
clack, c-clack, c-clac, clac, clud. Obeying the gravitational pull
of dejection, Defect rolled and floundered aimlessly in little circles
before settling in a flaw in the road, reverberating in tune to the constant
line of busy rubber circles. Grey and black asphalt showed gloomily
through the clear watery body. Every wrinkle and line magnified itself
through Defect’s cold glass eye, clouded over only by the blue smoke of
grumpy exhaust pipes accompanied by the sound of faraway tyres – the dissatisfied
sigh of an aging woman whose make-up can no longer aid in deceit.
The world went hurriedly by, men after woman, wine and song, women after
money, lust and unrealistic fantasies, children after power, dominance
and forbidden knowledge, watched over by a sky which now gathered a meeting
of dark storm clouds. The harbinger, which still strikes terror into
the young ignorant heart or the uneasy mind, stretches across the sky over
a world made small in its awe and magnificence. Thunder penetrates
every being, inanimate or not, a reality that hits only during the aftermath,
where a bright red spot of light floats on the retina, the wound from the
sword of light. The downpour of blessing and army of tears falls
from the same sky onto all within the arm of the storm. -----To five-year old Cory, the lightning
was a streak of bright searing hope across a sky thickened so dark the
sun could not be seen. The rain poured wherever Cory went, a constant
blanket of water beyond which foreign shapes and sounds came through distorted
and muted, drowned by the shrieks of thunder and blinded by the darkness
of the night whose reign knew no end. Mamaduck’s eyes came through
with the light, unmovingly fixed on him, translucent and green. They
disappeared, as they always did, with the next clap. The thunder
remained behind in the darkness, choking and stuttering, calling her name. - Cory, granny’s here! Don’t cry….hush
now, child, hush now…. - Mrs Hannah, you musn’t stop him now-
