Illustrations by Alison Berry
Guest art by Mel Stringer
Episode 10: The Anger Cape
Hana’s father shook her awake and the sick girl looked up at him groggily. She had caught a cold from the previous day’s battle in the rain with the giant chicken and felt like she could remain in bed for days.
‘Wake up! Wake up!’ her father asked of her excitedly. ‘It’s garbage day! Hurry, we need to get these logs outside before the garbage men arrive. Their truck is coming down the street!’
He was holding a large bundle of about four logs and Hana looked at him as if he were insane.
‘Why don’t you get Mom to do it?’ she asked. ‘I’m sick. Let me die in peace.’
‘She had to go to work early,’ her father explained. ‘Come on!’
‘All right, all right,’ she said, pulling off her blanket and sitting up at the edge of her bed. ‘Why do you have logs, anyway?’
‘There’s no time to explain! Grab the ones by your bed and bring them out, please.’
Hana looked down to see three logs crushing her poor pink slippers. She stood on the floor all wobbly, holding onto her dresser for balance. Not only did she feel weak, but the room was spinning, causing her to wonder if the logs were about to be covered in acidic moss. ‘I’m gonna hurl,’ Hana stated, but her father was too busy ignoring her pleas and loading logs into her pale arms.
‘No time to waste! Hurl outside! Hup, hup.’ And her father marched her out of the room at ludicrous speed, though Hana did not find it so funny when they were finally outside and she was throwing up her insides all over the front lawn.
Her father managed to catch the garbage truck just as it was about to drive by and helped to load the logs into the back. He then slapped his hands clean and stood with arms akimbo as he watched the truck delve further into the misty morning street, obviously proud of himself and his minor accomplishment. When he turned back he saw Hana lying on the lawn, arms and legs stretched out, a pile of puke beside her. Thanking her, he walked past her body as he returned indoors, shutting the door behind him.
Hana shut her sleepy eyes, hoping she would fall asleep and wake to a better world. Her father never explained about the logs.
Hana’s father put on the special hat he wore whenever he went out to develop photos. He had different articles of clothing set aside for different occasions, such as a cape he wore whenever he was angry. When Hana and her sister saw him wearing the cape they knew to steer clear.
Hana saw him wearing the hat as he stepped outside. She was still on the lawn but this time the pile of puke had obtained a twin brother on the other side of her. Getting out from between them was like going through the world’s most dangerous obstacle course, and the smell was enough for Hana to make the piles triplets. She managed to hold it in, however, since she was worried that all she had left were her guts.
‘What’s with the hat, Dad?’ she asked when she finally got to her shaky feet. ‘Are ya gonna . . . urp . . .’
‘Develop some photos? I sure am!’ he said cheerily. Hana assumed he was more excited to be wearing the hat than to actually be developing photos, especially since he was just going to be dropping the film off at some photo hut in a grocery store and not developing them himself.
The dandruff umbrella from a couple nights ago flashed in Hana’s mind and she suddenly felt a lot more solid.
‘Mind if I come with you?’ she asked timidly.
‘No way,’ her father declared. ‘You’ll throw up over everything.’
‘But I carried out those stupid logs for you!’ Hana exclaimed. ‘It’s the least you can do. Please. For me.’ She tried to flash him some puppy dog eyes but her greenish skin, dandruff-loaded hair and the dried vomit caked around her lips countered the effect she was aiming for. Thankfully her father let her into the car regardless.
Her father kept her window rolled down and told her to vomit outside if she felt the need. She suggested that she throw up into a paper bag she found under her seat and her father considered it to be the wiser course of action, just so long as she threw the bag out the car when she was done with it. Hana questioned her father’s obsession with her throwing up outside the car and brought up the legality of it all, at which point her father rolled her window back up. She wondered if she had actually won this round or if her father was simply waiting until they returned home so he could slip into the anger cape.
Hana poured out of the car when they reached the grocery store. Luckily she had not thrown up once during the entire trip despite some bumpy roads and anxiety being added to her sickness. She stuck close to her dad as they went into the store, not even thinking to break away from him for a few minutes to check out the dandruff shampoos. She wanted to make sure she was there when he dropped off the film to help ease all of the paranoid thoughts swimming around in her sick little head.
Her father paid the extra for one hour development and said he would do a little bit of shopping to kill time. Hana opted to remain in one of the chairs in the photo hut, not because she was sick – which was the reason she gave her dad – but because she wanted to be the first to look through the photos. She wanted to grab the photo of the dandruff umbrella and its double before anyone else could see it. She did not know at the time that the developers actually had to look at the photos as they developed them, but it did not matter since they had seen even stranger things in their time; to them a dandruff umbrella was just a small drop in a large, grotesque pond.
With a green grocery basket cradled in his arm, Hana’s father gave her the receipt to hold onto and left her to rot in the hut. And rot she did, with the other customers keeping as far away from her aura of illness as possible. She figured it was worth it as long as nobody she recognised entered the hut. That was when Pitaya came in with her own father.
‘Hana!’ her friend called out. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Dying,’ Hana replied blandly.
‘Yeah, I can see that. You don’t look so hot.’
‘Well, I feel hot, just not in a trendy way. More in an I’m-about-to-throw-up-all-over-you way. I hope those aren’t new shoes.’
Pitaya took a few steps back and then shook her head. ‘Did you hear about the giant burnt chicken?’ she asked. ‘They say that’s why school started late yesterday. Another mutated creature, like Kappa – it’s really crazy.’
‘Yeah, but maybe not as crazy as . . .’ Hana looked to see if Pitaya’s father was listening, but he was busy discussing various grades of film with the worker. ‘As when you turned us into animals,’ she finished.
Pitaya quickly looked to see if her father was listening as well. ‘You were a pretty cool Hanamal,’ she said. ‘I actually haven’t sung a thing since then.’
‘Just make sure that when you do, you use your power for good and not evil.’
Pitaya nodded, and then her father rejoined her.
‘Oh, hello, Hana,’ he said, bowing a little. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again. Are you ready, Pitaya?’
‘Yeah,’ his daughter replied. ‘See you later, Hana. I hope you get better soon.’
Hana thanked her and watched as they left the photo hut. She realised that no matter how bad her dandruff situation was, it would still be preferable to the curse that Pitaya had to suffer with. She could not fathom never being able to sing along to her favourite songs again.
Hana hoped that Pitaya was the only friend she had to worry about seeing her in her present state. Then Gorey came in, walking on his hind legs, his orange afro seemingly even larger than before. He was carrying a row of film in one of his paws.
‘Okay, now I must be hallucinating things,’ Hana said, slinking down in her chair.
‘Right you are, babe,’ Gorey said, and then the cool cat disappeared.
Hana rubbed her eyes and wondered if she had hallucinated Pitaya as well. Her illness was even worse than she thought. To her there were two types of illnesses: the good ones and the bad ones. The good ones let her stay home and do whatever she wanted, like watch tv or play on the computer, while the bad ones had her tossing and turning in bed, moaning for Death to finally take her away. What she was feeling now was somewhere between the two.
She spent her time waiting for the photos by reading everything that had words on it in the photo hut, and then after that she read every inch of the receipt. Twice. An hour was a very long time to Hana, even when it only ended up taking forty minutes for the photo hut guy to develop the photos. He called her over and she slid out of her chair before crawling her way to the counter, where she pulled herself up with the help of some racks.
‘So you have some photos for me, eh?’ she croaked.
‘Uh, yes,’ said the photo hut guy, pushing the envelope towards her. ‘You know, you don’t look so good. Where’s your dad?’
‘Buyin’ stuff,’ she said. She grabbed at the envelope but missed it, so she refocused her eyes and then grabbed at it again. This time it arrived safely in her hand, but only because the photo hut guy put it there. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and then she shuffled back to her seat and plopped back down.
She pulled out the photos and flipped through them, making her way past all the incredibly old Christmas photos and those of her aunt’s spring wedding, to find the dandruff umbrella near the back, just in front of a picture her sister took of herself in the bathroom mirror. Hana swiftly took out the photo of the dandruff umbrella and its double, folded them and shoved them into her pocket, at which point she realised she was still wearing her pyjamas. She would have fainted from embarrassment were she not so relieved to have the only incriminating evidence of her dandruff powers stored safely away in her pocket.
Hana folded her hands over the envelope on her lap, let her head fall back and went sickly asleep, her snores filling the hut like the croaking of an angry toad.
She awoke in the car. All of the buildings and cars quickly passing by the window were not a welcome sight to her, and no matter how hard she tried to stop it there came a torrent of sulphurous vomit from her mouth, splattering all over the dash. Without saying a word, her father pulled to the side of the road, got out and grabbed a roll of paper towel from the trunk. He then made his way around to Hana’s window and passed the roll to her.
After she cleaned herself up and the car as well, she stuffed the soiled paper towels into the paper bag and stashed the foul package into a nearby garbage can. Her father let the car air out a bit before getting back in, and then he calmly continued driving them home.
‘Sorry, Dad,’ Hana apologised for the tenth time, and she really did mean it.
‘It’s all right, Hana,’ her father said. ‘I just need to get home so I can slip into something a little more . . . comfortable.’
‘Nooo,’ Hana wailed, for she knew that he meant the Anger Cape. Her father locked the car doors and they continued driving home in silence.
Hana bolted for the front door of their house as soon as her father parked the car in the driveway. Her fear of the anger cape’s wrath braced her sick and wobbly legs, sending her soaring through the house to her parents’ room, where the anger cape was hanging in the wardrobe. She took the cape – which was still as bright a yellow as when it was made due to rarely being worn –, pulled up the window and threw it outside. It landed on her sister, who had been watering some plants.
‘Gwoaarrr!’ roared her sister, the cape now wrapped around her shoulders. She looked up at Hana with pure yellow hate in her eyes. ‘How dare you throw something at me! How dare you! I’m going to go tell Dad and make sure you’re grounded for weeks!’
Oh no! The anger cape was making her sister angrier than she had ever been in her entire life, and over something so simple as an accident as well. Hana dug her fingers into her hair in utter consternation, and flakes of dandruff built up in clumps under her fingernails. What could she do? At the very least she would have to make sure she reached her sister before her sister reached their father, in order to prevent him from being even angrier once he was wearing the cape. She glanced left and right out the window, saw nobody was around, and then pulled a particularly buoyant dandruff balloon from her head.
Now, jumping from her parents’ window with a dandruff balloon was not something she would think of doing in any other situation – and it is certainly not something anyone else should ever think of trying either – but desperate times were calling for desperate measures, so she held her breath, poked the balloon through the window and then followed after it.
The sensation of floating almost made her sick again but she managed to hold it in. After all, there was no time to waste, and she was not sure if there was anything left inside of her to waste either. She drifted slowly to the ground and then let go of the balloon once her feet touched the grass; the balloon continued on floating towards the sky, having many adventures of its own, but that’s an entirely different story.
She raced around to the front of her house, expecting to see just a flash of yellow entering through the front door, but instead found her sister lying flat on her back, the anger cape a short distance away from her.
‘What happened?’ Hana asked in alarm, rushing towards her.
‘I slipped on one of your puke puddles!’ her sister shouted in disgust. ‘Aargh, I can’t believe it!’
Hana tried not to laugh. She looked over at the cape and saw that it was stained in something.
‘Wait – did the cape land in one of my puke puddles as well?’ she asked.
Her sister set her head on the ground and looked at the cape upside-down. ‘It sure did,’ she said.
‘All right!’ Hana exclaimed, clapping her hands together. ‘That means Dad won’t be wearing it today. Or anytime soon, for that matter.’
‘Yeah, woo,’ her sister added sarcastically. ‘Now please help me out of this before I show you how angry someone can be without a cape.’
Hana helped her sister up and they went inside to wash, leaving the cape behind. When their father eventually found the vomit-drenched accessory it became the garbage cape, and he was never angry again.
To Be Continued In Episode Eleven: Pop & Tea
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Volume 2
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