David Griffin [Griffin - Turquoise Traveller

TURQUOISE TRAVELLER

Also by David John Griffin

The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb (2015)

Infinite Rooms (2016)

Two Dogs At The One Dog Inn And Other Stories (2017)

Abbie and the Portal (2018)

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by David John Griffin

Copyright David John Griffin, 2019

The moral right of David John Griffin to be identified as the

author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher of this book.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover design by David John Griffin

Text design & typeset by David John Griffin

Printed and Published via kdp

Dedicated to my loyal readers

The imagination is a palette of bright colors. You can use it to touch up memories or you can use it to paint dreams.

Robert Brault

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe

Knut Hamsun, Mysteries

Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe,The Raven

1 : REVOLVINGTHEDARK

Stave Swirler sat on a double-decker bus that travelled in the blackest night. He held up cough mixture to inspect it, unaware of why he did so. Prismatic shapes swam within the bottle. Chimes subtly emanated from its dark brown glass, along with the smell of menthol.

Peculiar.

That was a benign signal for him to replace the cough mixture into a pocket of his turquoise jacket.

He shuffled a hand in a plastic bag he saw beside him to find an apple.

Im guessing this must be mine.

An odd saying flashed through his muffled mind.

An apple a day keeps the monsters away.

The precise moment his teeth entered the flesh of the crisp fruit, a quiet voice from behind said, I adore oranges. And with a roar of the engine, the double-decker bus left the outside world and entered a tunnel.

Leaving night-time, the known darkness. Swallowed.

Sodium-vapour lamps were instantly replaced with similar within that tunnel that had been burrowed by vast multi-toothed machines under the slow river.

Drafts of foul-smelling air rushed through the bus.

What a stench. Like rotting food.

The smell clung in his throat and nose, his eyes watering. Stave considered drinking some of his cough mixture when the thought occurred to him that he was not aware of having a cough. But then the air cleared and he decided there was no need for cough mixture either way.

No past thoughts. My mind feeling strange with memories erased. Or blocked. Washed with black ink. Thats the only way to describe it. What am I doing on this bus? Cant remember where Im going or where Ive been. A nagging sense that reality has altered in a significant way.

Now a quiet bus engine more of a modulated hum as it passed ribs of concrete within the long tunnel. A cluster of lamps, a forty miles per hour sign, a telephone stuck to the wall like a large wart, an air-conditioning fan, then another concrete rib. Almost hypnotic in its repetition. Pulsing light with a pulsing sound of thick air, throbbing as the bus engine pulsed as well, in hummed rhythm.

Then the hum resonating like a hive of wasps in an echo chamber, making wax pop in Stave Swirlers ears.

Somethings not right. I have a strong feeling of an unusual occurrence, a premonition that badness is going to happen. Maybe the engine is going to stall in this tunnel. And such a long tunnel, almost as if its never-ending. Deeply worrying.

The absence of natural light, absence of understanding, absence of memory.

Panic rose in his throat, making him quake. He wondered if he was coming down with a fever. He held a palm to his forehead but didnt feel overly hot. He thought to undo his turquoise tie from about his neck or loosen the collar of his white shirt but changed his mind.

Nagging feelings of worry were still with him. Another bite to the apple calmed him he no longer shivered.

He saw a neat hole inside the apple, the size of a nail head, though there wasnt a hole outside on the red-to-green skin. Perhaps he had eaten the entry point of the grub, beetle or wasp; or whatever other tiny, burrowing organism it had been. At the bottom of the hole, near the core and the pips, was a small object catching the buss fluorescent light. Stave dug a finger into the fruit and clawed at the apple flesh with a fingernail, then extracted the item with a finger and thumb. It was a tiny feather, made of ochre-coloured metal. It had fine details on its quill and vanes, yet was no more than four centimetres in length.

Interesting, Ill keep that. Amazing what can be found inside apples.

He carefully placed the find in the right-hand pocket of his turquoise trousers.

A flash within his thoughts the word adventure jolting into his mind, then it was gone.

His attention was caught by the advertisements along the top of the bus windows. They showed flashing smiles from vacant models, and images of products held up, with slogans such as, Buy two, get the third twice the price! and Go here instead of there you know it makes sense.

Stave creased his brow at the preposterous statements.

Loud expressions of someone elses absurd mind.

He ate more of the apple, but the skin and flesh of it had become bitter. He carefully wrapped the half-eaten fruit in a striped handkerchief taken from a waistcoat pocket and placed it back into the plastic bag. He brushed his suit trousers with the edge of a palm before adjusting his tie.

What signals the beginning of a descent into a type of madness? No prescience, a wiping away of any warning

With a howling roar like the cry of a massive, prehistoric beast, the whole of the road tunnel, with flat floor and ceiling, and curved sides, began quickly rotating anti-clockwise. It took a while to register in Staves brain as to what was happening. Then he realised the impossible was occurring. He fastened his seat belt.

This is serious, we are going to crash; were sure to die.

The bottom of the bus scraped along the left walkway with screeching and a shower of bright sparks, then was travelling along the left wall that had become the ground. The bus swerved to avoid hitting the obstacles the grills, telephones and speed signs bumping over the tunnels concrete ribs. Stave gripped the seat rail in front of him, bouncing up and down while the quivering bus was thrown violently about.

Its a wonder the side mirror hasnt been smashed off. A surprise I havent been knocked out.

The bus was steadied, being driven at an angle in the opposite way of the tunnel spinning, to keep it upright. The driver was performing an admirable job under the peculiar circumstances.