Carl Smiles’ father is an oceanographer, he doesn’t understand Carl, he doesn’t understand his worries. The heat in the city at this time of year is stifling, the kids street weaving on their way home talk about nothing but car crashes and rotting bodies...fruit from the markets at the end of the day litter the streets and the stink is sweet sticky. Police helicopters are the soundtrack low thudding trouble rumbling. People growl at the television that shows a constant stream of explosions and fugitives rushing borders in pointless attempts at escape. The boys eat crisps and drop bits on the floor, ants eat the scraps and get greasy and fat, they eye the boys as a necessary evil. His thoughts turn to control, a kind of system of towers, or spinning metal wheels that fit inside and the different boxes he’s been collecting. Three faces are always showing up and Carl’s father is worried about the ocean, it is not behaving like it should. Sun spots. For years the sun’s lack of activity has been worrying the scientists now the flares it shoots out are worrying them more.... They seem content to crawl around in the street, Freddy the dealer has been up for three days, he’s lost his place and can’t wash the slime off, he goes out at night because its cooler then, but it isn’t. He can’t sell a thing to these kids, he’s got his conciounse back but he must get rid of this shit some how. Guns and knives are hidden down alleys and they all know where to find them in an emergency... All day the streets are filled with lopping somalians who know something wrong. Sirens. Years ago Carl was told about the theory of the towers in the woods that fence the city. Who put Bella in the witch Elm? in the trees there are powerful telescopes, they watch all the time, Carl knows this, he knows all these things and he keeps them locked up. One day he knows that someone else will find the keys. His Father says there are thousands of creatures at the bottom of the sea, if they came to the surface they would explode. He knows there are creatures on the streets that will explode, there sloppy bodies spraying passers by. The bus stop boys run at night they are always only minutes away from a crashing car or a monster. The Monsters live in the eyes of the news presenters who take great glee in reporting the gossip from the democracy of grass. The ants down there would fight for there junk. Freddy knows selling his stuff is out of the question, his tiny room is filled with newspaper clippings, he collects the letters that people write in. Once he was very drunk in a pub and a man had told him there were secret messages in these letters. He thought for a while that there were cars parked outside the block that had listening devices trained on his room. He forgot this. He forgot these things. He doesn’t know why he collects these letters. The woman across the hallway got dragged away by the police. They found a body in here place, it was mummified, she said she’d bought it on the internet. She didn’t own a computer but they think she used the one in the library. they are searching the records but mice got in and ate up the hard drives... this is what the police say. In the trees as dense as the words in Carls head there really are telescopes in the trees. Ten thousand eyes within every leaf on every tree, it is corrupted but it is solidly there. The Old Boys Carl’s Father drinks with rib him about his job, they call him a fish tickler, he takes it on the chin “they envy it” he thinks. Playing out way passed his bed time little Captain Fingers spies ‘em through the pub window. Some nights he can levitate up to the windows so he watches as the men talk and laugh and smoke and drink.
Cars go past on the streets, sub bass wobbles sitting in the still air, with your stomach you hear it, not your ears. Captain Fingers is a shape shifter. After a good feed he can go into the pub and be like these people. His mouth sticks up together as the feed wears off and he has to go out the toilet window. He dreams things and then months later he hears them on coach rides going out to the country. There is no peace. An Airline pilot in the pub knows Carl’s Father. Sometimes they fly together.The stories become fractured, the crumpled criminals hide there weapons and forget where they are. Carl is beginning to realise that he may have to give the keys to someone. It is time soon and the tablets he takes no longer work. He doesn’t even take them any more... “ this is the information centre” comes over the tannoy, this shakes the dust out, like a dirty dry drizzel.
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