Stories of the Island

(Turn Forever)

She wasn't like the others.

That was wot I noticed first. She didn't have nothing in her like all them other scrawny girls that fondled Muds all the time and giggled in my direction. She was kinda floating around them lost like a little eggshell inna pot of stew. Once or twice she looked at me with them big dark eyes kinda like mine, and she did have a nice body. But som'thin was wrong with wantin her body; it felt like I had bathed in oil. I was all slimy and greasy and I couldn't get it offa me, although I tried. So I stopped lookin at her below the neck and paid attention to 'er face.

After a while I stopped remembering how it looked. But I could draw a picture of it with my eyes closed or summat like that.

One day she came up to me.

"You are like me aren't you?" she asked with hair fallin' in front of her eyes.

"Whattaya mean?" I asked, taking an extra deep drag on my ciggy. I was getting a rush of some little magic pill the girl with the purple streaks had given me.

"Like me, you know …" She hesitated and dropped her voice to a whisper. "You don't really wanna be here."

"I dunno it's pretty good to me," I said with a little grin, the kind Muds had built from years a' practice, the sleep-with-me grin.

She looked lost so I slipped an arm round her waist. "Don't worry bout it doll. Just enjoy the music and the view if ya don't do any of the stuff they pass around. Even if ya don't like drinkin' or summthin there's plenty ta do." I was quickly slipping into philosophizing mood with the rush that li'l tablet had given me. "You're free of ev'r'thing 'ere."

"No you're not and you know it…" She looked positively d'pressed. "Never mind."

I tightened my arm on her waist. "Don't go."

She looked away.

I leaned my head back; coz the high was making me sick, and tried ta swallow my vomit. I let go of her and leaped to my feet to dash into a corner and spew. It smelled like crap. I wiped my mouth, chokin'.

There was a long silence and then I felt 'er li'l hand on my bare shoulder, just above yesterday's claw-marks.

"I'll admit it," I whispered, both to the pile of puke and to her. "I don' really wanna be here. I don't wanna smell piss and vomit and sex every day. I wanna sleep a whole night through. I wanna hear no doof-doof-doof in the background blockin' out the crickets."

"And see the grass and the stars and the moon?" she asked dreamily.

"Yeah, the grass." I hummed a few bars of 'o green world'. It made me feel lighter and soon I was singin' the whole song.

She smiled when I finished it. "You like that?" I asked.

"I like it a lot," she said, gettin' this dreamy look again. I smiled right back coz it was a catchy smile, a rhythm smile.

"I'll tell ya wot," I said, grinning still and grinding my cigarette into the floor. "Sometime I'll write ya one, and you can sing it wit me, yeah?"

"Yeah!" she said, real excited-like. It made me feel happy the way she bounced a little. And not just cause her rack jiggled when she bounced, either.

After that we spent almost every day together, well- almost every day. She refused to come round to me when I was flyin' on some new magic or trippin' on some new rush. She hated it, so I tried real hard to quit it out, but it made my blood burn me inside out so some days I still had to. And some days the other girls dragged me away, took me for some rough stuff, the stuff that hurt but felt really right too.

Most days, though, we sat and looked out the window and she and I just talked, philosophized even, and I tried real hard to write that song. Sometimes it was hard because the Inc. won't let you have nothing to write with. But she told me she had a photographic memory.

"You just say it," she said, smiling one of them far-off smiles, "and I can remember it."

"What was the first thing I said to you yesterday?" I said, taking a swig of my Jack Daniels.

"You said 'Hello'. And then after that you said, 'Look how pretty the sun looks when it comes up. I bet you if you could taste the sky sunrises would be sweeter than anything anyone anywhere can make with sugar.'."

"No way you 'member that!" I said with a gasp. She nodded.

So I started telling her the song as I came up with it, line by line, and even singing bits of it to her. We would reach real good harmonies together. Her voice was really sweet, pure, and I thought of her as my sunrise because of how sweet that voice tasted on my ears.

One night, deep in the night when the Inc. was at its hardest, she clung to me crying.

"I wanna get out," she whispered. "I wanna get out."

I stared out the window. I stared really long and hard, just hugging her when she cried. Finally, when she stopped, I tilted 'er chin up ta look at me.

"You know that song we're writing?" I said, very quietly. "I got a new verse for it." I winked and prayed she'd understand what I was about to sing.

"Windmill, windmill, for the land

Turn forever hand in hand

Take it all in on your stride

It is sticking, falling down

Love forever, love is free

Let's turn forever, you and me

Windmill, windmill, for the land

Is everybody in?"

She looked at me for a long time, and then her eyes slid to the window. She looked back at me again and this time 'er eyes were real wide.

She mouthed a word and I nodded. Then she asked, "When?" real quietly.

"It comes around tomorrow," I whispered, and then I kissed 'er and she tasted like sunrise.

But 'tomorrow' turned into 'today' real quick and I somehow ended up far away from her, with a pill and a bottle in my hand.

I was burnin' like liquid fire and I wanted so bad for the hurt to stop, so bad. But I had to go to her, I had to-

The pill jumped down my throat like it was a Mexican jumping bean and I couldn't stop it. Ev'rything started spinning and my only thought was, "I got to get to 'er!"

I staggered over.

"It's coming," she whispered, staring at me really hard with those big dark sunset eyes. "Are we gonna turn forever?"

I was hurting all over and I couldn't talk straight. I tried to say yes but just wheezed. I fell down and couldn't get back up again.

She was cryin. She handed me a little piece of paper. And then she ran out, out, and out.

It was the words to my song, all of them. I stared, heartbroken, at the windmill as it passed by my window.

That windmill only came around once every six months. I had told her last night in the song. If we got in there she and I could hit the mainland, and just be out there together, free, with no Inc. to stop us. She and I could have made it…

These days I don't see her anymore. It's been about five months now and I know the windmill is coming along soon. I sing that song, every day, hoping' she'll hear it. All the girls have started to look like 'er. All the pills have made me see 'er. I sing it, but now the Inc. sings back, with its own words for me. I watch out the window every day for the island.

Love is forever. Love is free. We could turn forever, you and me.